All Coming Down
by Sweetbriar
Summary: Rachel's psychiatrist? Sucks. "We're all…damaged, Berry. But we can all be damaged together." Be aware: monstriously long one-shot. Also: reposted, details inside.


_**Disclaimer: **I own nothing of this show. Songs ("Crash and Burn" by Savage Garden; "Beauty from Pain" and "Stand in the Rain" by Superchick) also do not belong to me._

_**Summary:** Rachel's psychiatrist? Sucks. He wants to strangle the bastard. "We're all…damaged, Berry. But we can all be damaged together."_

_**UPDATED NOTE:** Apparently this story was reported. I'm not sure why someone/some people got hung up over the use of a single curse word in the summary. Or if that was merely an excuse to remove something that someone did not like from the site. I did consider reposting this old story as a chaptered version, but decided to stick to my old format for the various reasons I originally chose to post it this way._

_**Inspiration**: This story sprung from the overhead phrase, "Everyone has a sob story."_

_**Author's Note:** Started pre-"Born This Way." __Please suspend any disbelief regarding the various confessions given by every member of the club; I am aware that there is no basis for some. I ask you not to judge too harshly (and be aware that I am fully aware of the risks I am taking in portraying the characters in this way). I wanted to address a variety of issues: though this story is Rachel-centric, this is an attempt to balance out that centrism by reminding everyone that the world does not revolve solely around a single character, and that their pains and problems are not the only ones in a person's universe._

* * *

_**WARNING**__: includes non-explicit descriptions of disturbing content including various physical and emotional abuses/traumas; suicide (attempts); and use of strong language (i.e., cursing). If this offends you or if you find this inappropriate in any way, this is your __**only**__ warning to stop reading now. If you continue reading, any complaints regarding the mention of questionable/sensitive material in and of itself or use of strong language are out of line and not appropriate themselves._

* * *

…

All Coming Down

…

"Party time!" Kurt squeals (seriously, _squeals_) when the door opens.

Puck's ears are kind of sore after listening to Kurt and Blaine babble about what-the-hell-ever the whole drive over. Plus, Finn was being pissy 'cause they didn't stop to pick up those chips he's addicted to. He really just wants to get this party started, but the look on Rachel's face when she opens the door sets off this freaky Rachel-sense in his head. (Shut up. He notices shit.)

Her eyes are just too _wide_ when she opens the door. There's fear on her face, plain as day, and then surprise, and finally this mask of joy. It's the same look she wears while on the stage, but there's something about it. Like it's not placed quite right. (Yeah, he knows what her emotions look like. He's that badass).

Okay… What the fuck.

She's the one who scheduled this party. And she hasn't gotten into drama with anyone recently. And, no matter what, he can't think of a single reason for her to be legitimately _afraid_ of any of them.

That pretty much exhausts his list of explanations.

The club got used to Rachel freaking out about punctuality sometime last year, so they all arrived at pretty much the same time. Mike, Tina and Quinn came in one car, while Santana picked up Artie, Brittany and Mercedes. When he looks over his shoulder at all of them, he can see the confusion is widespread. Even if they didn't catch her expressions, they can clearly see her. She's wearing her typical skirt-and-sweater instead of one of those insane prairie dresses. Her hair is kind of tangled and there's no makeup on her face.

She didn't even get ready for the party.

When he turns back, he does so just in time because she legit hurtles at him. He grabs her in midair and her arms wind around his neck. She's all fake-smiley and says, "Noah! I thought you weren't coming!"

She usually uses too many long words, but just then? Sounded like a regular teenager. He leans down so her feet are on solid ground and pulls her arms from around his neck. Then he leans back to get a good look at her. That's when he sees that her eyes aren't quite focusing.

He shares a look with Mike, the one standing closest to him, who is eyeing Rachel like her crazy train has added a few stations. His bro's jaw is kind of clenched, so Puck knows he's not imagining shit. He looks back down at her slightly glassy eyes. "Looks like somebody started the party early," he says slowly.

Rachel waves her hand dismissively and almost smacks him. Oblivious, she continues passing out welcoming hugs. Finn's forehead scrunches up and he looks at Puck over her head. Mercedes gives her a classic 'crazy-white-girl' look, but there is definite concern there. Rachel heads back into her house, talking over her shoulder. "You'll all be much more comfortable inside. I'm not done with set-up yet, there's little more to do."

Okay, he doesn't need any more red flags. One, the word count is way down and anyone who knows Rachel can hear it; B, she should have been done with setup hours ago because she's always on top of her game like that; and, lastly, he is almost sure that she has been drinking.

After last year, they all stuck to the deal on alcohol with Mr. Schue, and Winter Break counts as part of the school year. But this was Rachel, the girl who decided to stay totally sober after the Ke$ha Incident at the school. Rachel, the girl who was a permanent designated driver, even over the _summer_, at all their parties. Rachel, the girl who—to his knowledge—had not taken a sip of alcohol since said Incident. _That_ Rachel.

He follows after her, ahead of his hesitant friends as they enter the Berry's living room. She's trying to straighten up the place, and that's totally weird, too, because her house is never messy. There's nothing to clean. It's like she's playing a delusional hostess.

He glances around the room. Blaine catches his eye and nods toward the closed, locked liquor cabinet. Puck frowns as he scans the room for any bottles, but comes up empty. Wouldn't she have one out if she had been drinking…? Maybe she put it away. (He tries to ignore his gut feeling that something isn't right with that assumption.)

As if nothing is wrong, Rachel turns around and asks if they want something to drink. She wobbles when she does, her knees knocking together, and doesn't seem to notice her own lack of balance.

He doesn't quite know what to say. Puck can't freak out (it's _not_ worry, he's just _concerned_) because somehow, along the way, he's become a leader among this merry band of misfits. If he keeps himself under control, his friends tend to fall in line behind his attitude.

He has to center and calm himself (therapy for anger issues, but it works well whenever he's about to go off the wall) to get a grip before saying anything—which is the only reason Blaine beats him to asking, "Rachel, are you okay?"

Her bare toes tangle together as she tries to face him. He does not even know how that happened with her feet. She rights herself with more wobbly movement and says, "Of course!" The corners of her eyes aren't crinkling up like they usually do. "I am truly glad to see all of you. But I'll have to request that you stay in this room when I go upstairs."

In what world did that make _sense_?

Fuck this.

He drags her bodily over to the couch and sits her down. He feels like this is an intervention or some shit, but whatever. She's staring at him with these really wide eyes as he drags a chair over in front of her.

The rest of their friends gathers around, and they're all fidgety but no one seems to know what to say. Pretty much, it's him in charge of the interrogation. Rachel's eyes flicker around at all of them. There's fear on her face again, under the slipping mask of happiness. He decides not to dance around his suspicions. "What's up with the booze, Berry?"

She blinks. "I beg your pardon?"

"Were you drinking before we got here?" Quinn asks, sitting down beside Rachel. Tina follows suit, penning her in on the other side.

Rachel doesn't seem to know what to say. She stammers, clears her throat. "I felt that it was a good time for me to try something again."

"Bullshit." He rests his elbows on his knees. "You haven't touched alcohol longer than the rest of us for a bunch of reasons. Now you're not just starting up again, but trying to be secretive about it? What's really going on here?"

Rachel closes her eyes and shakes her head. "Nothing."

Puck leans in closer, completely invading her personal space, and her eyes snap open when he gets close. "Don't make me—" He cuts off as he gets a good look at her eyes and rocks back.

Her pupils are unevenly dilated.

His heart starts thumping a little harder. The closed liquor cabinet comes to mind, and the lack of liquor bottles. Another option comes to mind, one that puts him even more on edge. "What did you take?"

There are a couple exclamations behind him, but none are as important as the suddenly, blindingly frightened expression on Rachel's face. The mask is totally gone, and in its place is _'how did you know'_. He raises a hand and waves at everyone to shut up—whatever she's on might make this situation a whole lot more dangerous.

He calls her name. Rachel doesn't seem to register his voice. She shakes her head, but it's slow, not denial but _'I don't want to tell you'_ and her hands lift slowly to press against either side of her head. Little whispers start coming out of her mouth. He forgoes all caution and reaches out, grabbing her hands and bracing himself (if it's a drug, he doesn't know how she'll react to contact she didn't initiate). She doesn't even jump, though, just stares at him with dazed eyes. "Rachel." He repeats her name clearly and her eyes meet his. "What. Did. You. Take."

Finally, she speaks. "You weren't supposed to be here."

He blinks. The hell…?

She goes on as if alone in the room. "No one was supposed to be here. I didn't think it through, I forgot the party. I'm supposed to go upstairs in a few minutes."

There's something in the way she's talking. He pulls at her hands as her eyes dart off to the side. "Why?" he asks, trying to pretend the calm in his voice is real.

Her eyes are big and sad. "You need me." He raises an eyebrow and to his shock, there are tears in her eyes. "You weren't supposed to be here. I'm so sorry." She tries to tug her hands from his and he feels little tremors.

No one can see how freaked he is, 'cause he has to be tough. For them. (Though he feels like he's running a mile and the finish line is moving away from him). "What are you sorry for?"

"That I took them," she says, biting her lip. "You weren't supposed to be here. You always stop me."

Not knowing what she means, he risks looks away for a moment and sees Mercedes closing her cell phone. Kurt mouths "9-1-1". He nods and refocuses on Rachel, because though he needed a second to center himself, he knows that he needs to stay with her. An ambulance is a good idea, because they don't know what Rachel took, or why, or if she even knew what she was doing. They can't do anything.

He may be a reformed badass, but he sure as fuck isn't messing around with a straight-laced girl who is suddenly, unpredictably, on drugs. (Pot is different, and also his only vice. That other shit isn't his style).

Santana mutters something about checking upstairs for evidence, and Mike volunteers to go with her. Blaine moves a little closer, looking at Rachel's face as if he just needs another piece of the puzzle. Then the tiny brunette in front of him is trying to push Puck away, saying, "I should go."

He holds on to her shoulders to keep her in place. He knows their best bet is to keep her calm, no matter what she's on, which might be tough but she does seem to respond to patient questioning. He'll stick to that. "Why do you want to go?"

"Because you shouldn't see me like this." Her breath is coming in heavy. "You weren't supposed to. I'm so sorry, Noah."

He doesn't like the way she's apologizing. "Why wasn't I supposed to be here?"

"It'll hurt you too much. You weren't supposed to find out. You always did stop me." She sighs. Then she says, "I want to die."

He thinks his heart legit skips a beat. The words smack him in the gut, a chainsaw rather than a brick. She says it so matter-of-factly, so casually, that he (hysterically) wonders if she meant something else entirely. Because she can't mean… She can't. "You aren't going to die," he says. (He feels like he's not even in his body.)

Especially when she replies, "I'm so sorry," and her eyes close.

"Rachel." Fuck. If this is—no. She's just tired. He grips her shoulders a little bit harder. Her hands come up and grasp his elbows, and he holds on to that. She can hold on to him, can move. "Rachel, open your eyes."

"_You bitch!_"

The words shock him out of his bubble and his grip on her shoulders loosen, which turns out to be a good thing 'cause Santana shoves Finn into him, knocks him right out of his chair, and the two boys fall to the ground. The Latina girl grabs Rachel with one hand, the other clenched in a fist in front of her face. Rachel's eyes have opened again, she's staring, and Santana's shaking that fist in her face. "Did you _take_ these?"

"Santana!" He untangles himself as fast as he can, and pulls her away.

She flings what's in her fist at his chest. He grabs it as it bounces off and she's already back to the girl on the couch. "_Rachel_! Did you take all of them?" she screams. There are tears on Santana's face. He doesn't want to look at his hands, see what's got both of them like this.

He looks.

It's an orange plastic bottle, for prescription pills. And it's empty.

Puck tries to remember how to breathe and it takes him too many seconds to figure out how. He looks up and Rachel stares with glazed eyes. "I'm so sorry," she says again, her voice weaker. More tired. "You weren't supposed to be here."

From outside, he can faintly hear a siren.

* * *

The first time she thinks about it is when she is in eighth grade.

The day is not a weekday. (Looking back, this is troublesome). She deals with snide cracks from her peers in school. She thinks nothing could hurt as much as their teasing—whoever said that quote about sticks and stones has obviously never been teased a day in their life.

Rachel is walking to the car beside her Dad, grocery bags in hand, when she passes a classmate and her mother going in the opposite direction. In the space between them lay backhanded compliments, unkind laughter, and a head turning away from her companions. This girl did not participate, and to Rachel, maybe it means they could get along—if only outside of school. All she wants is for someone to smile at her.

In the real world, there is no hierarchy just beginning to develop, only adults who don't pay mind to the politics of children. The girls are in neutral territory. Rachel's lips turn upwards in a polite expectation.

The other girl does not even glance in Rachel's direction.

There is a swoopy sensation in her head. The world blur around the edges as she tries to figure out how to react, how to look at their non-interaction. No matter how hard she tries, the image of a perfect girl facing straight ahead consumes her vision. Not only did she turn her head when Rachel was being teased in school, but also refuses to look at her outside of it.

She pretends for her Dad. She does community theatre productions, she is an actress, she can conceal it. He doesn't notice how the encounter shakes her, continues a monologue about dinner.

She never told her dads about the teasing because she didn't want them to hurt for her. She does not want them to know. And yet she can't stop thinking that they're so oblivious, asking how they are ignorant of it.

In her bed, she lies awake trying to fall asleep and failing to stop her mind. How could someone she loved not know her well enough to see past her act? How could someone she barely knew dislike her so much and then not even give her a glance?

She feels like she is sinking. And she wonders: _why bother? What's the point?_

(In the morning, she looks in the mirror and says, "I never thought that.")

* * *

The EMTs storm the house. Even though he knows someone must have opened the door, it's like they barge in out of nowhere.

They pull Rachel off the couch and lay her flat on her back, on a stretcher, asking a hundred questions he doesn't know the answers to, demanding space to treat her, calling directions to each other in medical jargon. He hands one of them the empty plastic bottle and says that they thought she took the pills.

Puck looks around at his friends as he tries to listen to the EMTs. His only reason for doing so is to make sure everyone else was all right, 'cause he keeps thinking Rachel would be sad if her Glee club wasn't okay. Mike holds Tina, and Quinn and Finn cling to each other. Brittany curls up in Artie's lap, and Blaine helps him try to comfort her. Mercedes and Kurt hold hands. Santana stands alone, even when Brittany reaches out a hand to her. He is isolated, numb.

The world is too fuzzy around him, as the EMTs lift Rachel, take her out the front door. Everything else is on the peripheral. The red place is humming, threatening, and he concentrates to hold it back while everything is going on around him.

It takes him too long to remember that he and Santana are the same in this way. So he doesn't notice Santana start to shake, clench her fists, close her eyes. Fighting it. Losing it.

He clues back in when she screams. He looks up in time to see her rip a picture off the wall and throw it across the room.

Cursing at himself for not paying attention, he ducks another painting and a flying arm and grabs her as she goes for the coffee table. He wraps his arms around her waist and refuses to let go, as she struggles and wails and claws at his arms. She kicks the table and it cracks against the brick fireplace.

He knows how she's feeling. The violent outburst is their (un)natural reaction to over-feeling. Santana never learned to successfully control it; he has more practice in suppressing his first reaction around people he cares about. That's the only reason he hasn't lost control yet. Finn and Mike are watching him. If he starts slipping they know what to do with him. For now he's still got his head.

The other gleeks are caught totally off-guard. Finn and Mike stop the others from getting too close, but he sees over Santana's head that this freaks everyone out just as much as Rachel's condition. Only Brittany doesn't seem surprised, which is a relief. She pulls herself up off Artie's lap and ducks under Finn's arm, no hesitation.

He grunts at her to back off as Santana's foot connects with his shin, 'cause she may not recognize her blond friend in this state. He rarely even sees or hears beyond the red surrounding him when in this state. But Brittany lifts her arms and says, "San, it's Brittany. I'm here," over and over in a low voice.

Santana's struggles slow and she turns into a sobbing wreck. Brittany pulls Santana's head to her shoulder and Puck lets her out of his arms.

Then he runs for the door.

The EMTs are just loading Rachel into the ambulance and one of the dudes grabs his shoulder to stop him from getting in. Says something about him staying with his friends, tells him what hospital they're going to, says they can help by calling her parents 'cause they're just kids—and he _does not_ want to listen. Not when Rachel's lying there so still. No way in hell is he letting her go _alone_.

But behind him he hears crying, bordering on wailing, and the guy blocking him has this look that says Puck has to go hold everyone else together.

A hand grips his arm and he looks down at Quinn, who's fixed the guy with a look worthy of Sue Sylvester. "I'm going with her," she says, and there is no argument this time, just a warning to hurry. She climbs in without hesitating, grabbing Rachel's hand and keeping her distance enough to give the workers enough room.

She looks at him just before the doors close, and her expression is an apology and anger and pain. Although he has a chance to say something, he can't find his voice. They nod at each other, and he thinks she understands what he can't say.

Then the ambulance is moving and the siren's going again and they're gone.

Finn's right there when he turns around, and he can feel his best friend's eyes on his face but he can't meet his eyes yet. He looks at the rest of the Glee kids on the front lawn of Rachel's house, and they're all kind of in shock. He sees the same expression eight times, and can just tell that no one knows what to do. Santana shakes in Brittany's arms, and she's close to breaking out in another fit so he goes over.

He thinks Rachel would want him to take care of everyone. (Part of him wants to say fuck what she wants, she did this.)

(The bigger part is dazed and torn in ten different directions.)

Puck makes sure to hold Santana's arms down at her sides as he wraps his arms around her, and she almost struggles but with Brittany sandwiching her between them she starts to calm down. Her knees give out and then Brittany's do, too. He finds himself unable to keep holding both of them up because, _damn it,_ he was not prepared for this shit, it was supposed to be a normal night. Hanging out with his friends, eating crazy vegan crap, random singing. They're sinking to the ground until he feels more arms behind him, and he doesn't feel like he's going to collapse anymore.

And, fuck, he's got tears in his eyes, too, but whatever, no one can see. Everyone's hands are linked with someone else's, there are no dry eyes, all lean on each other and no one looks directly at anyone else. He can feel the weight of different bodies, leaning on him, and he plants his feet against the pressure so that he's like the main support beam they can all lean against. (He can take it.)

It must have only been a few minutes, but Puck knows that they have to get a move on. He clears his throat and glances around, and a few of them look up at him through watery eyes. "We need to get over to the hospital," he says. More eyes lift, more faces turn toward him. "And call your parents. Tell them it's Mercy, on Main. I'll—" he chokes, clears his throat. "I'll call hers."

Mercedes shakes her head. "No, I will," she says, phone moving to her ear. "You're driving."

No one wastes time moving.

* * *

Pretending is the only thing that will work. Rachel learns to lie to herself with a velvety ease. (That scares her, too).

When the other girls question her femininity, she comes home to an empty house and goes out to her backyard. Later, she tells herself that going home to stare into the deep end of her pool is not abnormal. Because water is soothing. And thinking about swimming, even if it is winter—that just means she wants summer to come. To think about staying there forever, that's just because it would be nice.

And when her clothes disappear in the locker room, she completes the day in her gym clothes and goes home in them, avoiding her fathers as she heads up the stairs. When she sits in her closet, she tells herself that it is merely a soothing space to sit and think. And sometimes an enclosed space can be comfortable, especially in such a nice walk-in like hers. Besides, she doesn't often appreciate her closet and really, should.

When she is not invited to sit with others during lunch, she tells herself that she doesn't need them. In lieu of having friends, she tells herself that she is a star. She has to work on honing her talents. That means a busy schedule, naturally, and of course her body would ache a little as she gets in shape. It just means she is working hard.

(Under the lies, she knows. Thinking about drowning is not normal; curling up in a ball in a closet and letting nothingness consume her is bad; becoming immune to minor pain medications because she works her body too hard is a major sign of trouble brewing. But why not lie? She sees no reason to tell herself the truth.)

Her dads support her enthusiasm for the stage, for the applause and praise and expression. They don't see that Rachel's obsession with the performing arts goes hand in hand with her alienation.

She realizes that her peers at school will not give her the attention she so desires. There is no way that she can be what they want her to be, so instead of trying again and again, she decides to follow the opposite track. Rachel decides to be unforgivably herself, and focuses her entire being on her dreams.

When her treatment at the hands of her peers does not change as she becomes more intense, it almost hurts worse than their initial cruelty. She's invisibly boxed into a category that will not change, no matter how she acts. Her actual self may as well be invisible.

She refuses to acknowledge that by the time she starts high school, her thoughts are circling death monthly. She has made her goals her life, and there are no other options. (Or so she tells herself.)

* * *

His ma's already at the hospital, having been at work since noon. She meets them as they come into the ER, and her arms reach out to grasp her son immediately. Her eyes go from face to face, recognizing them all from the show choir competitions. "I don't have any news yet." Her eyes bore into his, begging him not to do anything rash. "The doctors are pretty sure that she did take the pills from the container you found, and they're taking care of her right now. I promise I'll let you know when she's all right."

There is no doubt in her mind that Rachel will be fine. Puck doesn't know whether that's because she knows something she hasn't said, or because of simple faith. Either way, he needed her to say that so he can pretend it's the first option.

And so that he can try to process the tentative confirmation that she's given them. _Fuck_, Rachel did try to do it. The gleeks are moving in a bit of a daze, stunned at the knowledge, worried and freaked out about the implications of—

Rachel, suicide. Does not compute. But somehow, it worked in her brain.

His ma leads them to a private waiting room with a big glass wall that they can take over and asks if they called their families. Finn also made sure to call Mr. Schuester, and he's not surprised when their teacher shows up a few minutes into their wait.

Mr. Schue looks at them, and they stare at him. Then Brittany lets out this little puppyish whimper and raises her arms. They all converge in the middle of the room. There are more tears and no one wants to let go, so Puck, Mercedes and Finn drag chairs into a cluster and everyone sits, all touching at least one other person.

The next person to show up is Miss Pillsbury, who apparently arrived with Mr. Schue and stayed to talk to the nurses about Rachel's mental state. They wanted to know if the school guidance counselor knew anything. Her tear-streaked face looks a little too much like Bambi after his mom got shot for Puck to be comfortable.

After that, parents start trickling in. It's a Friday night, so most were at home chilling. For the Glee kids, Winter Break has meant hanging out with each other and impromptu practices, and their parents expected them to be together tonight.

Just not like this.

The parents formed a little group of their own after the first year of Glee club. Their performances always had a healthy number of family members in the audience, but the club started practicing weekends and doing community things a lot this year; their families have gotten to know each other pretty well. They're all worried that the Berry fathers have yet to answer their cell phones, and everyone has tried calling them. No one answers.

It isn't until Puck steps out of the room again to call that someone finally answers. He knows instantly it isn't one of Rachel's dads 'cause a woman is saying 'hello' on the other end.

"Who the fuck is this?"

Her voice is a little too polite, formal. "The caller ID says that your number belongs to a Noah Puckerman. Is this to whom I am speaking?" He answers affirmatively.

She tells him that she works in a hospital in New York. The cell phones everyone has been calling were on silent, found in the possessions of two men who were brought in. There are no witnesses to their attack, but the police have reason to believe it was a hate crime.

One of them is in surgery. The other died on the scene.

He's damn glad he's facing away from the waiting room of concerned people when he hears that. He leans back against the glass wall, thinking hard and trying to come up with something to say. "Have you called their daughter?" he asks. His throat is very tight.

"Their emergency contact information indicated that we should call their daughter's psychiatrist."

What the hell? "Why not any of her family? Or _her_?"

There's a pause. "I'm sorry, sir, are you family?"

"Yes." He wants to know what's going on and he'll play the lie if he has to. "Why the psychiatrist?" He has a strange sinking feeling in his gut.

He can tell she doesn't believe him. "I'm—excuse me, but I don't know if I can—"

So fuck it all. "I'm at the hospital with their daughter. She tried to kill herself." What he wants to ask is: _did they know this would happen?_ And did they do _fuck-all_ to stop it?

The woman gasps, murmurs a shocked condolence, and then finally gives in. "She has a history of suicide attempts. Her psychiatrist's assistant called us back and said he had contacted Rachel, that she was handling the information. We thought—we thought…"

Rachel.

Their (_his_) Rachel.

Attempts, as in _plural_?

He curses for nearly a full minute at her, and she tries to get him to calm down. It's not working.

When he manages to get himself back under control, he says, "She's not alone. There are a bunch of us here for her. What am I supposed to tell them about her—her dad?" Shit, it's singular now.

"I-I'm afraid I don't know what condition Mr. Berry is in right now." Double shit. He wants to curse her out again. "Can you give me the information of the hospital Miss Berry is in? We need to get some communication between us going."

So he tells her, and she offers some platitudes and tells him to hang tight with his friends. He grunts and hangs up after asking that Mr. Berry be told the Glee club is with Rachel, when he's conscious and out of surgery. The voice on the line says she will and they hang up.

Then he stares at the ground and tries to stop from going to the red place.

* * *

The year before Mr. Schuester took control of Glee was the one when she stopped pretending. Her thoughts tended to plague her at random intervals, and there were no predictable catalysts.

That first time Noah threw a slushy in her face did not cause her to break: it was the one five months into the school year that hit her on an otherwise pleasant day. She even saw it coming, but for some reason when she went to the girl's locker room, her stomach was churning. She cleaned herself up by taking a shower, which lasted all of lunch and part of the next class because at one point she fell to her knees and couldn't seem to move.

The crudely-drawn pornographic pictures in the bathrooms were merely a rude annoyance until Jacob Ben-Israel started paying unwelcome attention to her. The sixth day he tried to touch her, she escaped to the bathroom and one of the oldest pictures made her freeze and fade out until the bell rang. Then she curled herself up in a closet and stayed, trying and failing to pull herself out of the interior-sucking sensation. The only reason she managed to get out of it was because the janitor opened the door, thinking she had been locked inside as she hastened to put her acting skills to use. Because she didn't want anyone to know.

And the club was nothing. There were only four members, who did not truly want to be there. Mr. Ryerson forced them to join up for the school plays, saying that singing experience was necessary to compliment acting. The other members of the club were not Rachel's friends. She knew this for a long time, but there was a hope in her that maybe…

One day, she walks down the hall after her last class of the day and a fellow Glee teammate is walking up the hall towards her. She considers veering toward him for a moment, just to say hello. If she doesn't reach out, then how will he know she wants to be friends?

And then it hits her. Right in the face.

Noah Puckerman was thoughtful enough to throw a grape one. At least, she assumes it was him because he's the only one who slushies her with that flavor. (She wonders if he realizes that she prefers this syrup, and if this knowledge was known whether he'd switch and throw a flavor she hates, or just make sure that they always were grape and so continuously douse her with something she likes.)

This thought leaves her mind as she wipes her eyes, opens them, and sees that her teammate is not even pausing to gape. He blindly walks past her.

And in this moment, she realizes that not only is she not friends with anyone from the club, but she may as well not even exist. Not a single person stops to help her, pauses to see if she is all right. As she looks around, she notices that not a single person has even paused in the post-slushy shock in order to look at who was just belittled. She's such a nobody that it does not even matter that she was covered in ice and flavored syrup.

No one cares.

_Why bother? _

This time, the words fail to make her squeamishly hide. In the bathroom as she finishes cleaning herself off, she ponders all the lies. Everything she has told herself over the years now pounds in her head, and the truths unravel themselves. Her head throbs, the words pounding to get out. She doesn't want them there, none of the phrases and none of the images, but there is nowhere to put them.

Nowhere but out.

On her drive home, she is trying to separate what she sees in her head from the reality that surrounds her, and it becomes harder the closer she gets. By the time she pulls into her garage, she doesn't feel like she has any strength left. She parks in the garage and doesn't get out. She turns the car off as she tries to think of what to do.

And then she thinks that maybe she should just sit there. _Why bother?_ The refrain in her head just keeps going around and around in circles.

She sits for hours, unmoving. She can barely think beyond not wanting to be there. Paralyzed.

Then her dads are outside the car, voices rising in panic as they try to get her to open the door. If they're home it must be very late, but she doesn't know where time went. Their loving presence startles her, and the funk that she has sunken into is still eating away at her as she turns her dry eyes toward their faces. She looks at them blankly as her daddy uses his key to open the door. Then she tries to figure out what to say, but she can't think of anything. They eventually bundle her into their car to take to the hospital when it's obvious she can't seem to string two thoughts together.

Once they're driving away, the thought that maybe she should have left the car running pops into her head.

At the hospital, they can't find anything physically wrong with her. So they call in a psychologist and keep her under observation for three days. They are possibly the most peaceful days of her life, but she knows that if anyone at school knew about her condition and location she would be even more ostracized. This compels her to do everything in her power to appear normal again. She has to keep her mask on.

Her stay in the hospital ends with a diagnosis of depression and appointments with a psychologist. She puts her mask on and lets her fathers help her. Once feeling okay again after her long weekend of rest in the hospital, she remembers that she doesn't want to hurt them. Her dads love her; she doesn't want to disappoint them.

School is difficult but she pushes through until things start to accumulate again. She knows that it's not right so she goes back to pretending. She doesn't tell her psychologist about the problems because she still doesn't want her fathers to know, and certainly doesn't trust the claim of patient-doctor confidentiality. Her first impression of the doctor goes a long way, and he did not seem to pay attention to what she was saying during their first meeting.

She knows she is right when she slips words ('perfect pitch', 'jazz hands', 'two-step'…) at random into her monologues and he does not notice.

Most of the time she feels normal. She does not think bad thoughts very often. Most of the time she forgets the pain entirely, and nothing can bring her down. She feels like she's flying high. And those days where she doesn't feel that great she chalks down to being tired. Or to it being the weekday. Something she can ignore.

Then summer comes, and even with the mood swings she feels better than she has in a while. She has her extracurricular classes, which give her something to do with herself and allows her to think of nothing. She can concentrate, and be at peace. When holding a high note or tightening her leg muscles to perfect a pirouette, there is nothing except that moment of motion and emotion. There is something mindless in it, and she finds herself craving that lack of thought. (It should have scared her, how addictive that nothingness was).

She tells herself it's the sense of accomplishment she wants. The lies are starting again. (She doesn't mind.)

Then school starts again, and she finds her peaceful world of non-thought shaken up. Rachel takes back control by taking Glee club.

And everything changes.

* * *

His mind is full of Rachel. One of her fathers is just-like-that gone and he has no clue what's going to happen to the other. And then there's her secret.

It is a mindfuck and his insides feel like they're in the Arctic. He thought he felt bad about the slushies _before_, thought he would feel a bit guilty all his life for the bad things he did to others, especially those he now calls his friends. He thought he'd eventually deal because they would be great and succeed and all that. And now, now he's finding _this_ out about the one girl in the world that makes him feel amazing. The way he treated her has to have landed her where she is right now.

"_You weren't supposed to be here… I'm so sorry, Noah." _

And she didn't want him to see her like that, to feel bad about it. She thought she'd do it when no one was around, when _he_ wasn't around, to—what? Spare them? Because _she_ didn't want to hurt _them_. _Him_.

He really fucking wants to punch a wall right now. The red place is creeping up on him, but he can't. (Not yet.)

Puck turns, looking through the glass into their waiting room. It's obvious that he was on the phone. Since they know who he was calling when he left the room, it's not hard for them to guess who he was talking to. His teammates are half out of their chairs, all hopeful eyes. Santana, Finn, Quinn and Tina's moms are all huddled up together, as are Mike, Brittany, Artie and Kurt's dads. Tina's dad and Artie's mom took the younger siblings off their hands and back to one of their houses for the wait. He knows that the adults unaccounted for are either at home or—like Blaine's—have no clue.

The parents are sitting up, weary and tired, but their body language betrays their hope. Miss Pillsbury is looking at him with those freaking doe eyes again. Mr. Schue seems to be the only person in that room to notice the tick in Puck's jaw as he tries to keep it together for them. He's the only one with a frown. "What did you find out?" he asks as Puck opens the door.

'Cause he doesn't want to have this conversation, he glances away. Luckily, he spies his ma is coming down the hall. She's walking fast, but she's not looking at him with those sad eyes so it can't be bad news. He holds the door open and she slips around him into the room. Her hand reaches back to grab his elbow as, without preamble, she announces, "She'll make it."

He sags against the doorframe.

_She'll make it_. She's alive.

Everyone takes a breath of relief, letting go of some of the tension of not-knowing. Mr. Schue grips the back of his chair and Miss Pillsbury's hand; the Glee girls all reach for hands and the guys lean in. Their parents relax a bit, and his ma just rests her hands on her hips and waits for the news to sink in a little before continuing. "She's asleep now, and will be for a few hours. We need her fathers, though. Has anyone heard from them?"

That makes all the stress come speeding back to him. The moment of relief, of knowing she was upstairs breathing, is overshadowed by what presses on his shoulders. Mr. Schue frowns at him, and everyone turns. His ma looks at him and there's real concern on her face.

He feels like a bastard, saying what he can't keep from them. "Her dads were attacked. Police think it was a hate crime. They're in a hospital in New York, one's in surgery. The other—he didn't make it." His ma's hand claps over her mouth. He forces himself to look at her, and only her. "She must have found out mid-afternoon. Their emergency contact info said to call her psychiatrist."

Everyone is quiet for a long minute as new grief sets in, but Mr. Schue is still eyeing him. "What else did they say?"

He swallows hard and looks away from everyone, tries to get his grip on it. He's having a hard time figuring it out himself. How can he just _tell_ them? What if she doesn't want them to know? And then a part of him erupts in anger (at her at him at the world) and he has to focus to blot out the red place, to ignore it.

His ma tugging on his chin helps.

"Noah," his ma says. She looks at him, with that _'I_ _want you to tell me what you know right now'_ gaze.

And he blurts. "They said she has a history of suicide attempts."

* * *

The new Glee club is a world apart from the first one.

It's never _all_ sunshine-and-daises, and she never expected that. She knows well enough to realize that conflict is a natural part of life, particularly in high school. Her desire for friends does not delude her that much. But the good times are a surprising experience that makes her highs that much higher.

Somehow, she finds a place in her school. Even though it's not perfect and separate from the world, her place is unlike any other. She finds herself wanting to feel emotion again, and slowly, she knows that she is dedicating herself to this jumbled group of people.

The original gleeks are her first friends, and she tries not to let them know that. She has to have some form of control (everyone has hurt her before and she wants everything too much). But she finds herself actually laughing and having fun at school. The Cheerios and football jocks that join make her uncomfortable at first, but she can tell that they are slowly breaking down barriers between what they know is right and what they do regardless of consequences. From certain psychological journals she has read (in order to fool her own doctor), bullies are often dealing with a torment of their own.

She's not naïve. This is high school: everyone experiences the hell in some form or another.

Unknown to her bullies, she has forgiven them because she knows that her torments have, in turn, made her treat others badly. Her ongoing struggles with the Glee club members is proof enough that she manages to mess up social interaction on a daily basis. She does not treat her friends right, maybe because she hasn't learned how, and possibly because she is reacting to what she has experienced. But it seems unspoken between all of them that they are trying. They are all seeking common ground, and she's not alone in making mistakes. She's also not the only one learning from them.

For the most part, she is fine. She is sometimes bothered by the ups and downs she experiences, but brushes aside inner concerns of bipolar disorder. And she thinks it is not a problem.

But the bullying is, and she wants desperately for it to stop. There is a non-relationship that is kind of there yet can't happen and she just wants something she can call her own. She wants them to be competing in Sectionals-Regionals-Nationals but she wants school to be over.

She wants—wants—_wants_—until something in her snaps.

She's out with her dads for dinner and goes to the bathroom. The front windows of the restaurant which she has to pass to reach the restroom are one-sided glass, and she pauses in the short, semi-hidden hallway in front of the ladies' room door to look out across the parking lot. There's a popular pizza place across the street, and she recognizes people from school meeting up outside of it. She doesn't know their names, just recognizes the gestures, the emotions, the connections between them.

And suddenly she feels like she's burning. A part of her says that if they look towards her, then she's wanted. (Irrational, crazy, but.). She begs them in her head to turn around, to look at her. None of them do. She lifts a hand, places it on the glass.

That vine-thought curls back in, the one that asks _why bother?_

She pushes open the bathroom door and locks herself in a stall, staring at her feet. There's this disconnect, like she can't understand the world around her. There's something wrong with her, and the thought hits her hard enough to take her breath away. She's _wrong_. There's something _bad_ about her. Why else does everyone dislike her? What other explanation is there for the way she can't quite connect to others?

Rachel pulls her mask back in place as she leaves the ladies' room and plays the game with the one-sided glass again, asking for (the impossible:) someone to turn around and look in her direction. Again, no one does. That's the moment that breaks her, that pulls her slowly into this little cold cocoon of planning.

Her fathers don't notice. This is yet more proof, and she heads upstairs. Leaving the lights off, she turns on the bathwater and strips off her outer clothes. Folds them, places her cell phone, necklace and wallet in a line on the counter. She climbs into the tub with her bra and underwear still on, waits until the water is almost up to the edge before shutting it off. She lies there for a long moment, staring up through the dark, and then slowly sinks down into the water.

Her back is flat on the bottom of the white tub, and she holds her breath as she looks up through the water. She can't see anything up there, around her. Holding the edges, she prepares herself to breathe in—suddenly a light is in the room and she knows that's not because of a lack of oxygen.

She propels herself up, breathing in a gasp in shock (discovery, no!). Then she sees her phone, left on the sink counter.

Rachel stares at it, debating whether to continue what she was doing or check it. But she can't bring herself to ignore the faintly glowing light. She wipes her hands on a towel as she steps out, soaking and dripping water everywhere. She presses a button on her phone and sees that it is a text message. She opens it.

_Noah (7:52 PM): question 4 u. busy?_

She blinks. Breathes. Replies, while glancing at the full tub behind her. The water's not going anywhere.

_Rachel (7:55 PM): I'm not busy at the moment. What is your question?_

Her mouth feels dry as she stands there, wondering what he wants to know. The last time they spoke was on the bleachers. She remembers watching the angry lines of his back, knowing that he was hurt and feeling horrible for doing this to him. For someone who wanted everyone to be afraid of him, he was startlingly sensitive. She recalls what it felt like to kiss him and plucks at her wet bra strap.

_Noah (7:59 PM): hypothetical?_

She can't help the upwards quirk of her mouth. He's also not entirely stupid—those naps in the nurse's office don't stop him from moving up grade levels.

_Rachel (8:00 PM): If you say so, then I will treat it as such. _

She smoothes her underwear. The wet material clings uncomfortably to her skin. She glances at the tub again. Her phone beeps.

_Noah (8:03 PM): if u dont want 2 hurt sum 1 wood u tell the truth if u no theyd h8 u?_

She does not want to help Noah deal with his problems when she feels like going back to the tub, but ignoring him would raise questions. And she meant what she said on the bleachers. This sounds like something a friend would do—one last good deed, perhaps?

_Rachel (8:04 PM): Honesty is usually the best policy. However, if I practiced what I preached, then sometimes circumstances call for concealment. Is this hypothetical situation for me to decide?_

She feels a little weird texting Noah in only her underwear, so she pulls her towel off the rack and wraps it around herself. She's cold.

_Noah (8:05 PM): thot ud say truth always. so lies = ok sum x?_

She takes a moment to interpret his latest text-speak. As she sends the message, she realizes with a jolt that he's actually talking to her. Asking her opinion. She leans against the door as she realizes it.

_Rachel (8:06 PM): I suppose it depends on the situation. _

Her legs give out and she slides down to the bathroom floor, clutching her phone close. It's suddenly become her lifeline, to someone who—for the entirety of a week—looked at her in a way that set her skin buzzing. Who remembered things about her, who listened to what she said and sang, who was unafraid to walk the halls with her arm looped through his. And the people at the pizza place, and her dads, may not _have_ seen her, but right now he _is_ even if he is not physically in the room.

_Noah (8:07 PM): in this 1 u wood want 2 tell_

And he's asking her for advice. She's not buying the "hypothetical", which he knows. He is actually asking for her help, even though they broke up and are not on the best of terms. And it's doubly important because she has a vague idea of what he is actually talking about based on their conversation on the bleachers.

_Rachel (8:08 PM): Then I suppose it is good that this is a hypothetical discussion, since I cannot tell a hypothetical truth. But now I have a question: what would your hypothetical decision be? _

Her heart is hammering in her chest and she can barely concentrate on anything else but this revelation that is battling with her resolve. Her mind is in turmoil and she glares at the tub of water as if it is the water's fault. She just wants—she doesn't know what she wants anymore. Noah's reliance on her is distracting, but she can't tear herself away.

_Noah (8:09 PM): i cant _

He wants to, though. Otherwise he would have said "won't". She wants to encourage him to choose the other way, if it will allow her to have what she wants. But that's not what she would or should say, and thinking ahead like that is making it more likely that she'll be around to reap the benefits of Noah's possible decision to try breaking Finn and Quinn up for his own desires.

_Rachel (8:10 PM): If keeping a secret can protect someone we value from pain, it's natural to decide against causing distress. It's an admirable choice. _

She shifts her position on the floor, eyes now unable to look away from the screen of her cell phone.

_Noah (8:11 PM): and if its not 4 their sake? its selfish?_

Somehow, she has a feeling that's not his only motivation.

_Rachel (8:12 PM): Human nature. Hypothetically, Noah, I think there would be a part of you that wanted not to cause hurt, if you chose to keep a secret that could hurt a friend. _

Her ankles are getting a little sore from being pressed against the tile of her bathroom floor.

_Noah (8:13 PM): dont get all psycho its hypothetical_

She winces. Then pauses, tilts her head. In Noah-speak, he only means that she is reading too much into the situation. She knows that she's not, but he wants to pretend. She should find it a little sad she's the only person he can come to about this—she thought he was popular. Maybe he just doesn't want anyone else to know.

_Rachel (8:14 PM): Of course. _

And with that, she's sure that he won't be talking to her again. He's used her for what he wants, if only because she already has an idea of what it's about. She stands up and stares at the tub for a long minute, laying her phone down on the counter again. She takes two steps forward before the little screen lights up again. Startled, she picks the phone back up.

_Noah (8:15 PM): i wasnt lying b4 but mayb i shud b wrong_

She honestly doesn't understand.

_Rachel (8:16 PM): I beg your pardon?_

And then he replies.

_Noah (8:17 PM): when i said we werent friends b4, and u said we shud b_

Her throat feels clogged. For a moment she thinks she won't be able to handle it. She doesn't know what to do, it's one of the many things she has wanted and finally, she's getting something. It's a start, isn't it? Her eyes fall to the tub, swing back and forth. She types in a reply.

_Rachel (8:18 PM): We actually said that the other way around. Regardless. I would like that very much, Noah. _

It's a dedication of commitment. He wants her around. Someone wants her to be their friend. She knew that her Glee teammates got along well with her, but she always wondered if that was because they are all working toward the same goal and had to learn how to get along. Friends by default. But Noah does not have to be her friend. Everyone would understand if they did not get along very well, were awkward, because of their failed romance. It would be understandable. He would have an excuse for their less-than-friendship status. But instead of jumping on the chance…

_Noah (8:19 PM): cool. wut u up 2?_

She stares at her phone. All she has to do is reply. She looks back at the tub. She can't quite shake that heavy feeling that brought her here in the first place. Just thinking about it again sends a shiver down her arms. The water swirls like a siren, calling to her.

It would be easy.

She reaches into the water and pulls up the plug, then gathers her damp clothes and holds her towel around herself tighter. She slips down the hallway into her bedroom, closing the door gently so that it doesn't make much noise. Then she curls up under a blanket on her bed holding her phone, not bothering to clothe herself or completely dry off.

_Rachel (8:21 PM): Absolutely nothing. At the risk of you saying something vulgar, what are you up to?_

* * *

"_They said she has a history of suicide attempts."_

Those nine words can suck the life out of a room. His teammates collapse under the same weight that keeps him unsteady. His ma is holding on to his shoulder with a vice grip, and he forces himself to look at her. He wants to beg her to just take care of everything and let him curl up under the covers on his bed, ignoring the world around him. Let her put it all to rights and deal with the consequences.

But she can't do this for him. This is his life, his Rachel, and he can't do a single thing to help her. He's probably the one who made her this way, and that fact is eating him alive even as he stands there.

Santana pulls away from Brittany, pacing, hands tugging absently at her hair. He pays attention this time, and knows that she'll dive for a chair to throw through the window at any second. That's the only thing that can compel him to move in that moment, and he makes sure to move fast because everyone else is stunned and heartbroken and too out of it to do anything. He's the only one who gets it, who wants to help her smash everything they can find, and he knows that this, helping the team, is the only way to actively help Rachel now.

He has to take care of what she loves the most, and that's Glee club. Everyone knows how much she loves Glee.

Santana ends up kicking a chair just as he grabs her around the middle. She lets out a short animal scream and claws at the arms he's got around her middle, trying to twist out of his grip like a cat. She's always dangerous like this, the way she was earlier in the Berry's. He rides it out, telling his ma and Mr. Schue to back off when they get too close. Even Santana's ma gets a warning, because he _knows_ Ms. Lopez can't handle violence—the flashback-look keeps crossing her face. He doesn't tell Brittany to back off when she reaches out and wraps her arms around her friend.

He lets go when Santana goes limp and is sobbing out what sounds like apologies. He looks at the rest of the gleeks, seeing the same guilt that's been churning around inside of him.

Tina looks a bit freaked out, but Mercedes has her hands. There are tear tracks down their cheeks. Mike and Artie are sitting close on either side of them, and he doesn't even think of making a joke about their stifled tears. Blaine and Kurt are outright crying; Blaine's trying to be tougher, but Kurt's known Rachel longer. Finn seems completely out of it, and Puck locks eyes with Quinn, who's trying to get a reaction out of him. She looks at him for help, pleading because she doesn't know what to do.

Puck grabs his oldest friend by the shoulder. Finn looks at him and he knows what's going through his best friend's head—'cause it's in his, too. Finn is over Rachel, but they really liked each other at one point and suddenly they know that she was hurting so badly for so long and none of them knew. And everyone in Glee except Rachel knows that Puck's been into her all year, but that he didn't act 'cause he didn't want to screw it up.

Finn knows what this must be like for Puck, right in this moment. Because not only is Puck currently in like with her, he's also got that history with Rachel in which he was a bully and she was the prey. And yeah, that shit always messes with his head.

So, somehow, that manages to pull Finn together, and he slings his arm around Quinn again and pulls her closer to him. She looks at Puck with these thankful eyes and he looks away, checking to see if everyone else in the club is good. Because it's the only damn thing he can do right now.

They're pretty much settling into each other, holding hands and sharing tears. The parents are gathered with his ma, probably talking about what to do for Rachel now. Mr. Schue is part of their conversation, but his body language says that he would rather be with his kids. Miss Pillsbury has a hand on his arm.

All he wants is to punch something. The red place is trying to drag him under and it's tough, but he knows he has to stay in the room. He can't lash out like Santana because no one in this room could handle it, and he cannot put anyone in danger, especially not when he feels like he put Rachel in the hospital.

The adults break up and go to their respective kids, and he stands up abruptly as his ma comes closer. He can tell by the look on her face that she wants to stay there, be there for him. "You should get back to work," he tells her when she cups his face in her hands.

She looks him straight in the eye and says, "This is not your fault."

So…he came clean to his ma about all his behavior last year, because he was in a funk after he had to give the baby away and it built up and eventually landed him in juvie. She was threatening to send him to a counselor unless he unloaded on her, and since there was a lot of crap bottled up in him he ended up talking a bit too much and then she pushed until she got more out of him. Then she made him start seeing someone about the anger problems, saying she should have done it earlier.

The thing is, he doesn't think he can handle her psycho-babble right now. He isn't good at emotions, and it's uncomfortable to admit even to himself but he is a mess right now. He shifts uneasily because he worries that the others heard, and what if they do blame him? He doesn't want to deal with their judgment even if he thinks it might be right.

He opts for, "Ma, you have to get back to work."

Her lips tighten and she raises an eyebrow. "Say it."

"Go find out what's happening with her." She doesn't budge. "Please."

She grips his shoulders and lowers her voice, knowing him well enough. He's glad that the room is not completely quiet. "Noah, you say it right this instant or I'm not going anywhere."

He tries to hold out, but he wants her to go so that she can come back with information that much sooner. So he bites the words off like they hurt him. "It's. Not. My. Fault." They're barely more than a whisper, but he's sure that Finn heard the whole exchange 'cause he can see his friend sit back a little out of the corner of his eye.

She knows that's the most she'll get, and focuses on the rest of the club. Her voice is soothing and demands their attention, which is given immediately, and this must be the kid-version the adults agreed on. "We're going to do all we can for her, but she'll end up being taken to the psychiatric ward as soon as she's stable. Cases like hers are required to be held under strict observation for a minimum of three days, and depending on the circumstances possibly longer. Since her fathers are unavailable and there is no next of kin on her records, we're still up in the air on what to do next."

He bites his lip and wants to keep his mouth shut, but ends up expelling a breath of air. Around him, he can tell the rest of the club is thinking the same thing and none of them likes it. His ma notices, raises an eyebrow, and Quinn quietly says, "Her mom, Ms. Corcoran."

She nods, that look of '_my teenage son is a father'_ on her face. "Yes, but we don't have any of her contact information."

Puck shifts uncomfortably and clears his throat. He never realized how wound up in Rachel's life he was until right now, but it's suddenly kind of ridiculous and he feels bewildered. But that feeling gets submerged as every eye in the room locks on him and he recrosses his arms and looks from his baby mama to his mother. He tries to mumble his way through it, but when his ma gives him the '_I will hurt you if you don't talk'_ look he clears his throat and repeats himself. "I have her cell number and address."

"Why?" His ma's got this awful knowing expression on her face and he rubs the back of his head.

"Beth."

Thing is, he never really told anyone for two reasons. One is that Shelby Corcoran is _not_ a great mother to Rachel. He didn't want to bring up all that shit to her. He only half-liked the woman and the half that liked her only did because she was taking care of his baby girl. He wanted to remain a part of Beth's life, and Shelby was willing to let him. She sends him pictures in the mail every month or so.

The other reason he didn't tell anyone—and he means _anyone_, Artie and Finn included—is because of Quinn, who is glaring now that she knows. "It was supposed to be a _closed_ adoption."

"_You_ wanted that._ I_ didn't."

His ma holds up a hand. "That's who the mystery letters are from?" He nods guiltily and she looks up as if praying for patience.

Which she probably is.

Because, okay, so he may have lied about the letters when his ma noticed them.

She seems to give up on that for the moment and asks him for the information, which he scribbles down on the pad of paper she carries in her scrubs. She pats his cheek and leaves the room with a soft farewell and a promise to come back with news.

He feels a little uncomfortable with the tension now present in the room, because the whole baby issue has long been boxed and put away. It brings shit up, which is uncomfortable even if in the past. Plus, now everyone knows one of his dirty little secrets and he's going to have to tell Rachel himself.

Whenever he sees her, whenever that is. The not-knowing hits him hard and he sits down, this time near Mr. Schue because Mrs. Hudson-Hummel is sitting next to her son and holding his hand.

Miss Pillsbury takes the chair next to him and he debates not looking at her. Then he decides he kinda has to, and gives her a '_hit me with it'_ look.

She folds her hands primly. "Would you like to talk about any of this?"

"No."

…Okay, yeah, a whole fucking _lot_, but he's not going to. He looks back over the gleeks, a cursory check, and notices Blaine heading out the door. Kurt's got his dad's arms wrapped around him so he doesn't notice, but Puck sure as hell isn't about to let one of his teammates wander off alone right now. "Look, Miss P, I'll be back. Just—ask someone else, okay?" Because he might not be able to talk about it yet, but someone in this room probably does need to.

He ignores anyone who might be looking at him and slips off after Blaine. The kid goes into the bathroom, so Puck takes a seat a little ways down the hall and waits for him to come back out. He folds his hands and rests his elbows on his thighs and tries to think of anything to say, but he can't, not really.

(It's all so fucking surreal.)

* * *

The restaurant-to-bathtub incident is not the first time someone from the Glee club unintentionally saves her from herself.

One day, an (unintentional) snub from Mercedes in the morning primes her for a slushy to trigger another slip. Brittany _almost_ finds her curled up on the floor of the showers, but she pretends that she slipped and the bubbly Cheerio frowns and asks if she's okay, then if she was slushied, and then if she knows how to get to the choir room. Rachel says she's fine, that she was, and that if Brittany lets her get dressed quickly she will take her to their practice. Brittany is nice to her, and talks away, asking questions and offering random statements. When they reach Glee, Rachel is clambering back up out of that dark little hole she had been in and her happy mask becomes genuine.

There was also a time that Kurt's scalding fashion critique sent her in a tailspin, catching her in the afternoon of the day Jacob Ben-Israel trapped her in an empty classroom during lunch. (He attempted to blackmail her into sexual acts. Again.) At practice after Kurt's remarks, Rachel tried desperately to hold herself together and perform while half her mind was on the car attempt and a possible reenactment. Then Tina asked her if she wanted to go to the mall and brainstorm for competition costumes. The girls window-shopped for ideas, sketched out various options for performances and had a nice time in the food court. Halfway into the trip, her mask became real.

Santana's ill-timed comments once caused a crack that Mike, of all people, helped smooth over. Artie was nice to her after a new Quinn-drawn Sharpie picture in the girls' bathrooms had threatened to break her. And as a feminist-minded liberal, she was ashamed to admit that at some points, her turbulent romance with Finn threatened to bring her down. In the light of her happier moments, the idea that her emotions toward a boy could make her feel like giving up was harebrained.

Then Jesse happened.

When they were together, she felt special and wonderful. She felt like she was on top of the world, that there was nothing life couldn't give her. Her downer moments were smoothed over, because he was such a presence in her life that he could tell when she wasn't feeling particularly cheerful. He made her feel at least calm again. He was as dramatic as she was, and it felt like he truly understood her. Their relationship felt like a partnership, where they were working hand in hand to help support one another.

Even after her screw-up with the video, she was sure that they would be all right in the end. She was caught in a happy updraft, which surprised her; she was sure that their trouble might throw her, and she worried in her calmer moments. But instead, she was stupidly upbeat. For some reason, she had faith this time, and that convinced her that this was love.

But then she found, and lost, her mother. She fought with that down-swing, because it hurt and made her feel stretched thin, but she kept reminding herself that her mother didn't know her, didn't try. It wasn't an informed decision, it was just one of those judgments strangers make about one another. She tried to tell herself that.

And then Jesse was on a stage singing with Vocal Adrenaline, without ever letting her know that he left McKinley.

With Mercedes' arm around her, she tried not to feel the sucking pull. She rebelled against it. He loved her, they would fix it eventually. She hurt him, so he was allowed to hurt her, too. She was in an undeniable funk, but fought it. She lashed out, particularly at Puck, but couldn't really bring herself to care while spiraling this way. She was not giving up this time, not when she knew that it had to be love. And if it was love, wouldn't he come back to her?

Instead, she is egged. And all her efforts to hold back the wave become like rice paper resisting a sharpened blade.

She stands in the parking lot and watches their black cars as they pull away. She feels oddly blank, like she is floating outside of herself. School is almost over and there is no Glee practice today. There is nowhere for her to be, no one expecting her. No one helping her get somewhere to clean the egg gunk off.

No one loving her.

The hits keep coming, almost as if they are taunting her. Testing her resolve not to give in.

_Why bother? _

_What is the point?_

There is a spare towel in her trunk, which she spreads over the driver's seat to protect the upholstery. She drives home, is uncertain when she gets there knowing her dads will not be back for two days. They went to daddy's conference in Idaho. Everyone who knows—the psychologist and her fathers, that is—think she hasn't had an episode since the car one. Although her psychologist moved in for a while after the lightning bolt that was her mother, he moved back out three days ago when she convinced them that she was okay.

They can't stop her this time. No one can. But she does not have a plan yet, either, and she's mostly feeling that inner-sucking that makes her want to curl up into a little ball and not think. Planning means thinking and that means having to deal with it. There's something inside her that is consuming her, eating her alive from the inside-out, and she cannot get past it.

She wanders mindlessly around the house, touching things and considering others, and then curls up in the living room on the sofa. She pretends that she's clutching a teddy bear, not a bottle of pills.

At some point, she falls asleep. Her dreams are full of angry mother hens and hands clawing into her numb chest.

When she wakes, it takes her a full minute to realize that her cell phone is chirping from her pocket, and then another to realize that the doorbell is also going off. And a third to blink and realize it is dark. The sun set while she slept.

Her mind is a little clearer, which means it's time to start planning. She thinks a bath sounds about right.

A part of her doesn't want to check her phone, knowing that if someone is asking for her that they would be able to pull her out of her funk. Then the doorbell goes off again and she realizes that someone is out there anyway. But she just—can't. No. What if it's not someone asking for her, just a random stranger? She doesn't want to be stopped this time.

Making a point to avoid looking at the front door, she heads up the stairs to her room. None of the lights in the house are on, so whoever is out there will eventually think that no one is home. She sits on her bed and realizes that her hand is still clenched tightly around a bottle of pills. She puts it on her bedside table and pulls her cell phone out of her pocket. She doesn't want to be stopped—right? But she presses a button and looks at the screen of her phone anyway. There are (21) text messages and (3) missed calls. She checks the texts.

_Mercedes (6:24 PM): girl, are u okay? I just saw Ben-Israel's blog. :( _

_Quinn (6:25 PM): Sorry it happened, Berry. We'll take care of it._

_Kurt (6:26 PM): Just got the news. How are you? :( _

_Noah (6:29 PM): wut the fuck why didnt u tell me bout it_

_Artie (6:30 PM): Rachel are you okay?_

_Tina (6:30 PM): Just saw B-I's blog – I'm here if you need to talk._

_Finn (6:34 PM): Kurt texted every1. Who did it?_

_Noah (6:35 PM): srsly berry u tell me this shit_

_Santana (6:35 PM): Brit & I on the Blog – whos not getting any frm the Cheeri-hos 4 the rest of 4ever?_

_Brittany (6:35 PM): hugs. big ones that crack ribs. san said whoever did it is on sexbargo 4 life. _

_Noah (6:45 PM): u ignoring me? _

_Mike (7:14 PM): dude w/ puck & he just told us. checked up on it w/ santana. u ok?_

_Matt (7:14 PM): w/ puck. he told. u ok? answer him, hes being nuts_

_Noah (7:30 PM): berry wtf answer sum1_

_Mike (7:31 PM): no1 has heard frm u & pucks going bonkers. answer pls_

_Kurt (7:31 PM): Honey, no one has heard from you. Please answer this text. _

_Mercedes (7:32 PM): we gonna get together and come to ur place if u don't answer _

_Finn (7:39 PM): I cant go w/ but talk 2 them ok?_

_Santana (7:40 PM): gleeks r heading over – issue w/ mom, & Brit at my house, sorry. text if u need bitch hugs, will sneak out._

_Noah (7:41 PM): thats it berry we r comin if u arent there u dead_

_Noah (7:49 PM): ur car is here we no ur home answer the door_

Somehow, it was enough to start tugging her away from that dark place. She blinks in shock at the number of texts, at their concern. It's enough to prove her wrong again—they all care, they all want her around. The dark feelings are still there, still threatening. And their desire to hear from her is stronger. Rachel considers replying, but pauses.

_Ben-Israel's blog… B-I's blog… the Blog… _

Her stomach twists as she considers what Jacob could have posted. Suddenly, their eagerness to hear from her is much more worrying. Her mind jumps to the car attempt, the one her parents know about and those that they have no clue about. What if—her stomach twists sharply and she dives for her computer. No one is supposed to know, no one can know. They aren't supposed to. It's not for them to worry about.

She almost breathes a sigh of relief when she sees the picture, taken earlier that day. It's her, in the parking lot and covered in eggs. She's standing there, still as a statue, and she knows she must be watching those black cars drive away. It's just an announcement of the "Epic Egging of Rachel Berry", and she scans the text to note that he has no clue why she was egged or who did the deed. From the words, she can tell everyone assumes someone from school took bullying to a new level.

She looks at her face, and realizes that in the picture she looks emotionless. Her face is completely blank. Like there's nothing inside of her. It's almost fitting, because she certainly felt like that.

Then she feels the bottom of her stomach has dropped out and she realizes that her teammates are aware of this incident. As if on cue, her cell phone chirps again. She lifts it and sees yet another text.

_Noah (7:51 PM): i heard ur ringtone b4 u r inside answer the fucking door or deal w/ a b&e_

Her skin feels crinkly and dry and as she shifts, she realizes that she never changed out of her clothes. And that means going to take a bath.

She knows that if she does take a bath right now, she'll never answer the door.

Standing up, she heads toward the door and pauses, wondering for a moment what she should do. Then she reaches out and flicks on the lights in her room. It's a signal to let them know, because her room is over the garage and if they are outside they'll see the light go on.

Sure enough, as she turns on the hall lights and heads downstairs, the doorbell rings and her phone chirps in her hand.

_Noah (7:52 PM): dont pretend u dont no we r here we see that light_

_Kurt (7:52 PM): Come out, please. I think Puck is about to burst a blood vessel._

A part of her feels like laughing, but as she unlocks the door she finds that she is unable to summon any amount of humor. To her surprise, they're not crowded around the door—rather, most of them appear to be on the lawn, and as she stands there Noah shouts at her window, "Berry! Damn it! Get down here!" Mercedes and Tina seem to be hunting for something on the grass. Mike, Quinn and Matt are standing close to Noah—who really does look like he's about to pop a blood vessel—while Artie and Kurt are waiting the closest to the door, on the walkway.

Artie's the first to notice her presence, probably because she neglected to turn the porch light on. His voice sounds a bit too loud as he says, "Rachel! Finally!"

Then she feels a lot of eyes on her, and Noah looks like he's about to stomp toward her but she doesn't want him to, she wants to move but she's stuck. Then she finds her voice and the _stupidest_ thing comes out: "I'm covered in baby chicks."

It seems to stop his blood vessels from popping because he kind of freezes and looks completely disturbed. Kurt slips past her and flicks the light switch on the porch and then there's a collective gasp and a shocked silence. She thinks her hair is probably a complete mess and there is egg yolk all over and she can feel the crust of it on her face.

Kurt's too close to her when he steps back out and gently turns her to face him. He looks paler than ever and the only thing she can think to say, all that's left of her mask, is, "I'm vegan."

She sees sympathy in his eyes as he acknowledges what that means, for her to be vegan and to be covered in dead baby chicks. "Honey, how long have you been like this?"

"I don't even drink milk." Her mouth is betraying her. She can feel tears welling up but refuses to let them slip.

He looks away from her and says, "She's in shock. We need to get her cleaned up."

Warm bodies are shuffling her along into her house, and she knows that people are asking her questions but simply can't, for the life of her, answer any of them. She's struggling to keep the dark hole from sucking her in, but it's so hard.

She comes to with a splutter as the showerhead soaks her with lukewarm water. She shakes her head and realizes that Mercedes and Tina are in the bathroom with her. Tina's got a towel in her arms and Mercedes is telling her to start cleaning herself up. She blinks at them and mimics a fish, mouth moving noiselessly as she tries to think of what to say. Finally, she settles on, "I'm sorry, I don't know what's wrong with me."

Tina's lips twitch up and her smile is somehow comforting. "It's okay."

"Just get cleaned up," Mercedes says, patting her once on the back. "We'll be right outside."

They leave and Rachel puts in effort to cleaning the egg gunk out of her hair and scrubbing her body. She scrubs hard enough to make her skin sting, but doesn't realize it until she's climbed out and is drying off. She pulls her thin pink robe off the back of the door, shrugging it on and closing it securely. Then she hangs her wet clothes over the shower rod and turns to the mirror.

Her face is a little pink from where she scrubbed the egg away, and her hair is tangled and out of control. But she doesn't feel anything. She wonders how suspicious everyone would be if she just filled up the tub right now. Then she remembers how much Noah wanted her to answer his text messages, how everyone—even people who didn't show up at her house in a worried craze—texted her to see if she was all right. And she realizes that at least eleven people care about her, want her, texted her in concern the second they knew she was hurting. Eight of them were standing outside of her house tonight.

She opens the door and steps out. More lights in her house are now on, but she can hear voices in her room and that light is the only one that's on upstairs. She walks in slowly, taking it all in as she gazes around. Kurt is in her closet and Mercedes rifles through her dresser. Tina stands at her vanity. Her laptop, which she knows she left on, is now closed. Quinn sits at her desk, one hand resting on the top while the other lies on her stomach.

Quinn and Tina look up as she enters and stand. Tina gestures for her to come over. Rachel sits at her vanity as Tina pushes her into the chair and quietly picks up her hairbrush. She almost protests, but still feels a little dazed. So instead of saying a word, she lets Tina brush out her hair. The quiet girl does so very gently, not yanking the brush or hurting Rachel's scalp. Mercedes and Kurt have a dialogue going on in the background, but she notices that they're actually trying not to say anything insulting about her wardrobe. Quinn has joined them and seems to be getting the final say in wardrobe choices. She wonders where the boys are, but then Tina's done and she's being pulled gently up and Mercedes is handing her clothes.

She looks down and blushes a bit because Mercedes went through her drawers, but the underwear she's chosen is some of her nicest, and the pajama pants are silky, and they're even paired with a comfortable, oversized and worn-out sweatshirt. She's a little surprised that Kurt didn't go fashionista on her, but the clothes scream comfort and well-worn. She has a feeling it was mostly Quinn's doing, but she's seen Kurt go up against women twice his size in the mall to get Mercedes a shirt she wants—he didn't fight her on it.

It's their way of saying that everything's going to be okay.

She starts to tear up and suddenly they're in a group hug and she's got her eyes pressed to someone's shoulder as she cries.

And it feels so much better than the idea of crawling into a full tub right now.

She doesn't think about what that means.

Finally, she pulls herself together and goes into her closet to dress. Then her friends—her _friends_—take her downstairs with their arms around her, and she finds out that the boys have been there with Artie, who of course can't make it up her stairs. Two of them drove out to the grocery store, and they have ice cream and sorbet on hand. Mike, Matt and Artie all give her smiles and ask how she is, and she replies with watery eyes and forced cheer.

Noah isn't buying it, she can tell when he gives her this look while handing her the bowl of berry sorbet. She smiles at him, but he just looks at her with an unreadable expression on his face. She tries not to let it bother her, and focuses her attention on her Glee friends. She tells them that she fell asleep, hence not replying, but adds that she doesn't really want to talk about what happened yet. They let her get away with it, probably because she was such a mess when they arrived. They spend a pleasant couple of hours together, and then Artie's dad comes to pick him and Tina up. Mercedes, Quinn and Kurt leave soon after, and give Matt a ride home when he says he's going to be late.

Mike is pleasant as ever, but Noah is still a little surly. She feels anxious when Mike asks her where the bathroom is, but she can't exactly deny him the information. Then she starts cleaning bowls in the sink nervously and drops one in the water when Noah finally asks her what happened.

She can't look at him. She's flashing back to that video she made, and the way they almost kissed. She wanted to be faithful, not a cheater. He could have ruined it for her. And suddenly she wishes, vindictively, that she _had_ cheated on Jesse. That she had caused him more pain, so that what he had done would be a little less heartbreaking.

But then Noah's arms are around her and she leans back, turns around, presses her face to his chest. Tears are falling out of her eyes again and she whispers that she doesn't want to talk about it but it hurts-hurts-hurts. He makes this rumbling, soothing sound. "You'll tell tomorrow, 'cause the punkass is gettin' a beatdown."

He holds her a bit tighter when she doesn't reprimand him for his violent assertion. That's how she knows that he actually gets how much it hurts.

Mike doesn't say anything when he reappears, but joins in the hugging at her request despite Noah's muttered threat. Rachel quietly tells him not to argue and he doesn't, even though she knows that neither boy is fully comfortable with the hugging thing.

When they finally leave, she is able to go to sleep again, but her dreams are filled with mother hens. It makes for a bad night.

She is exhausted at school the next day, and her funk is worse than ever. Not one of the Glee kids has asked yet about what happened the day before, but plenty of people are laughing about it.

About halfway through the day Rachel starts avoiding her friends because it's gone around school that no one at McKinley was responsible for the Berry Egging.

When everyone in Glee thought it was just an escalation of the bullying, they were fully prepared to stand up for her in school today. But with this new information, they suspect who was truly responsible for the eggs. Now it's about more than her, which makes her feel conversely more secure. Probably because they won't get close to discovering her shameful secret if half of their anger is focused on the fact that this attack was meant to hit all of them.

But she also feels a little uncomfortable, because if it is what they suspect then they have confirmation that Jesse is worse than they ever assumed he may be. Worse than a spy. And they know that for her, the hits have just kept coming. First Shelby, now Jesse. She sees Noah stalking through the halls several times over the day, but refrains from letting him, or any of them, find her.

It lasts until Glee, even though she's later than usual due to Jacob's insistence on getting an inside scoop no matter how hard she tried to get away. Most of the team is waiting there, and the only one beside her who isn't, is Kurt—because he dragged her away from Jacob and frog-marched her to the choir room.

He forces her into a chair in the center of the circle and everyone's eyes are on her. Kurt says, "Spill. What happened yesterday?"

She can't sit still so she starts to slowly spin the chair and then the words come out. She tells them from the phone call down to the last egg being cracked on her head, and somehow ends with her nightmares about the hens and the baby chicks.

When she says Jesse's name she can practically hear every person in the room sitting up straighter in their seats.

Noah's violent reaction shocks her for a moment, but then she feels undeniably up from the way the boys are all standing to storm out, and the girls are gathering in closer to her. And then Mr. Schuester comes in, and the next thing she knows they are preparing a number to get back at the team. And a large part of their drive is for _her_ sake. She can see it in their faces, and the way their anger is being channeled into cooperating on the number, in the sympathetic smiles and touches.

And it's enough, for her, to know how _with_ _her_ they are in that moment. How much they care. Because that's what is driving away her dark thundercloud right now, and she never wants to give any of that up. She wants to cling to this feeling with both hands and all her toes.

After practice, Noah stops her as everyone is heading out. He gives her this look, and asks if she is really okay. He says it with more curse words and hands shoved in his pockets, but she feels what he really wants to say and leans up on tip-toes, presses a kiss to his cheek, and looks him straight in the eye. "You can be a good friend, Noah. Thank you."

When her fathers come home, she comes clean about the previous attempts and thoughts, and they decide together that the therapy is obviously not working. Her fathers seek out another doctor, a psychiatrist, and she is prescribed medication. When the Regionals shit-storm hits she doesn't let it take her down. She rides out the wave and emerges from it victorious.

They decide that the medication is more helpful than counseling. She doesn't tell them that she wasn't sharing everything, anyway, and that it would have been more effective if she had.

The pills take away that dangerous feeling and that's all she wants.

* * *

Puck sits outside the waiting room with Blaine for a good twenty minutes. In the spirit of the situation, he finds himself engaging in a little sharing-and-caring. The kid tells him a bit about his awful dad, and Puck gives in and offers a gruff half-mention of his own. He's not one for the whole trading sob stories thing, but he's such a mess inside and this kind of talking—sharing, no judgment—is helping him keep his head. At least Kurt's boyfriend isn't giving him too much grief over it. Dude seems to understand. He's cool like that.

When Mr. Schue leans out of the room, Puck claps a hand on Blaine's shoulder and tugs him up. Their teacher offers a weary half-smile as they come back to the fold, and Puck pretends he can't see the curious gazes from the gleeks.

They're all a bit too busy at the moment to deal with gossip and drama anyway.

The parents have decided to head out, and visiting hours are way done—it's so late that it's officially early in the morning. But none of them want to leave yet, not until Puck's ma comes back with news. Since they're all at least seventeen, a few of them eighteen, it's decided that they are allowed to stay, but have to come home at some point to shower and change. Mr. Schue and Miss Pillsbury are staying with them.

Mr. Schue—and Miss P—really, sincerely care about them, so they're in good hands.

The room is quiet for a little while after the parents have left, but Miss Pillsbury clears her throat and looks around the circle from eye to eye. They all look back at her with roughly the same weary, torn expressions. She clasps her hands together in her lap. "I know that this is a tough situation, but we're all here together and Rachel is recovering. Maybe this would be a good time to let out something that you're feeling, since we have a safe and trusted environment around us."

She's a bit batshit, like Rachel, and maybe that's why Puck gets along with her so well. There's just something about Emma Pillsbury that makes her believable, even when he half-thinks that she's spouting off bull from a guidance-counselor manual. Somehow her enthusiasm makes him think she honestly believes it will work. (Sometimes it makes him believe, too).

Puck looks around the group. They seem to be debating whether or not to say anything, and he knows it isn't about trust. They all know each other way too well—they're a bit incestuous and sometimes it's creepy. But they're also so tight with each other. He wonders how many of them are keeping secrets that they haven't told, the same way none of them know Rachel was keeping _that_ secret.

And, really…he wants to know. He does. But does he have the right to ask when he doesn't want to offer up any of himself?

"I don't know what to do for her." He jumps—was that him? No, wait, that was— He glances up and sees everyone watching Quinn. "I never knew—none of us ever knew that Rachel was hurting so much. And after everything that I—" She rubs her face with one hand and Puck tries not to look at anyone. He can feel Santana watching him and—he just can't. He has to hit something first.

Artie breaks the brief silence and draws the attention his way. "I feel like I should have known," he says. "At least wondered. I mean, it's not exactly an unfamiliar feeling for me." He looks down at his legs. "And she's been bullied a lot. But she always seemed so strong."

"I think she is," Miss Pillsbury says. "If she's struggled with it for a long time, then she's made it through some rough patches and is still here."

Puck grips the armrests of his chair and Finn nudges him with his leg. "That she struggled with this at all is really the problem. I thought we all knew each other so well, but she kept this secret from us." He opens his mouth as if he's about to say more, but stops and closes it.

Miss P leans in. "Yes, Finn?"

Mercedes says what they're all thinking. "It feels like she didn't trust us. But that's dumb. I mean, most of us have treated her pretty badly at some point." Everyone looks down. "And because I—I know I have secrets, too. As much as I trust everyone, there are just some things you can't quite figure out how to say."

"Everyone has their sob story." Mike adds. Puck glances up, but his friend's still looking at the ground. "That's what I've heard. All it means to me is that everyone has something in their past they don't like to talk about, and sometimes it can come up again and hurt somebody in the present." Tina squeezes his hand and he looks at her, a half-smile on his face. "It doesn't mean you don't trust someone. It's just that you're…afraid."

Tina's giving him this look, but she doesn't push. Puck's pretty glad for that. She looks at Miss Pillsbury. "Maybe that's the problem. That we're all afraid to talk about that one thing, because we don't know how we'll all look at one another after. I…" She looks down. "I had a friend once, and she seemed to think there were degrees of awful."

Miss Pillsbury tilts her head. "Can you explain that?"

Tina bites her lip. "Like, 'my story is worse than your story', 'I've suffered more than you have because of x, y and z.' Like a competition. She wanted to have the worst story, and it meant that what I'd gone through wasn't as bad, and that meant it wasn't as important."

Blaine shakes his head. "But it's not about the number of bad things or how extreme it was. No one has the same story, the same past. Everyone's is different, and everyone has their own struggles. There's no point in ranking experiences, because no one is the same and there is no way to put it all on a continuum or a scale."

Puck's kind of shocked that they're all going through with the talking thing. He's also a little astounded by the way they're all keeping the conversation going, and he can see Miss Pillsbury sharing a look with Mr. Schue.

Santana breaks the short silence. "How does this help Rachel?" She doesn't say it with her usual attitude. He hasn't heard her really talk since she screamed at Rachel in her house. His ex-whatever seemed almost meek and docile now, especially after two major breakdowns in one day.

No one else has an answer for her, but he was thinking about something earlier that just won't get out of his head. "She needs to know that she's not by herself."

Everyone looks at him and yeah, okay, he knows that probably made very little sense. What good does preaching to her do? But he crosses his arms defensively—the idea is awkward—and explains. "Look, we can't do much for her. She's got doctors to help her with that. But there is something we can do. She's going to feel totally on edge around us now that we know some of her shit. So, she should know shit about us. What we don't want her to know about our lives."

He looks at everyone in turn, realizing that he probably knows, or half-knows, or guesses, every single person's little secret. And, yeah, that it makes him feel completely weird. Where was badass Puckzilla? What kind of loser had replaced him?

The kind everyone apparently opened up to, that's who.

But…it meant he also knew what he was asking of them. He made sure to look each person in the eyes as they squirmed in their seats. He could see that they were resisting the idea, so he pressed it. "For Rachel. 'Cause it's about her knowing that we understand. Not that we like it," he adds, glancing at Miss Pillsbury. "But that she doesn't have to hide from us. Because we have our own secrets."

It's about as emotional as he can get without having a moment to black out in that little red place that wants to take him away. But he pushes it down, because he's here and he knows that everyone else needs him more right now. Especially Rachel.

Miss Pillsbury offers a quiet encouragement at the room remains silent. "I think that would be a very helpful thing for Rachel, and for yourselves."

They all look at one another again, and resolve starts forming on each and every face. He feels both relaxed and tense all over again. This mix of emotions is driving him insane.

* * *

Glee club has become like a family by the time they reach Nationals.

It's strange to have eleven people she can depend on. She has ups and downs, but hasn't felt very bad for a long time. The medication has helped her so much. She hasn't tried anything for a long time, and the consuming feeling has not taken her over in months. The summer opens her up to an exploration of her relationships with these people she considers hers. For the most part, any drama that pops up is understated and forgotten quickly. And there is a distinct lack of romantic drama, which is a welcome breath of relief.

Unlike the previous summer, everyone stays in touch with everyone else—even when they lose Sam and Lauren. They throw each member a goodbye party, have a wild and crazy time, and exchange letters, e-mails, and text messages. Wishes of hope go to Sam's family getting back on their feet with the new job opportunity, even though it's taking him away; wishes of luck to Lauren for pursing her dream with a pro-wrestling offer that was too big a deal to pass up.

To her surprise, she finds herself growing even closer to Noah once Lauren leaves. They split on mutually friendly terms, and she's not trying to start anything. Every person on the team has a unique relationship with every other person. While she feels connected to every person, there's a closeness in her bond with Noah none of her other friendships quite reach. She slowly finds herself drawn to him, but doesn't let anything happen. She can't. Jesse made it hard for her to trust that much again. She thinks that may have played into the disastrous attempts at winning over Finn.

She thought he had broken down her walls, but in the end of it all she realized that she was simply not being herself. There were no walls to break down when she was not acting like Rachel.

Around Noah, she acts like Rachel. She is more certain of who she is, after everything that has happened. The medication helps her so much that she thinks she can do anything she sets her mind to. Now when she spins tales of making it big on Broadway, in the movie industry, in music, it is because she believes she can, not because she is clinging to a desperate hope.

Noah lets her weave her tales of all her dreams, listens to her spinning fantastic tales, and in the end offers up a dream of his own: to leave Lima. That's it. She's momentarily stunned by the admission of something so small, but then she's never been one to doubt others' dreams. So she smiles at him, lays a hand on his arm, and says, "You can do it."

Then she spends the latter half of the summer trying to get him to focus on academic work, because there was no way she was going to sit back and let him squander his potential.

She already suspected his prowess in mathematics, due in part to her knowledge that he had not attended a lecture in years and yet was able to pass from grade to grade without any problem. A few delicate questions about illegal, immoral sexual activities with teachers led to one of their only fights, so she is sure that he is telling the truth and merely finds classes boring. He has gaps in his academic knowledge as a result, and if he wants to advance he should cover the gaps.

When he arrives at her house two days after their talk, her study materials for each subject from her previous three years of high school are stacked neatly in her room. He takes one look at the boxes and she has to fight to keep him from leaving—meaning, locking her door and then physically blocking the window with her body.

He doesn't want to cooperate, but eventually she persuades him after making an offer that she knows he'll respond to: she will make out with him if he studies a little bit every day. He seems to seriously consider it. To her surprise, he says he'll play along without the physical compensation. At the time she's happy that he has come to his senses, and sets up a schedule for studying and for her to quiz him.

After a couple of weeks she suspects that he is going over material he has already covered in an effort to appease her.

Unhappy with this possibility, she decides to again take matters into her own hands. True to form, she brings it up during one of their Glee parties for support. Most of them are on her side, but Noah, Finn, Mike and Artie are laughing and sharing looks, so she demands to know the joke.

She's a little shocked when Noah finally spills.

They have registration two weeks before school starts, during which their schedules are confirmed and they pick up their books and IDs. Once he has the textbooks for his classes, he just reads them all in the following couple of days. Remembers it. And then has nothing to do in class for the rest of the year.

Rachel gapes at him. Finn, Mike and Artie laugh at everyone else's expressions and confirm it as truth. Finns adds that he's been doing it since middle school.

Sitting back, Rachel notes aloud that this could explain the majority of his unnecessary attention-seeking actions. He gives her a dark look and grumbles that it's not about attention, and she sighs. "Well, of course not! That's what people say when young adults act out in inappropriate ways. If you did not find yourself mindlessly bored in all of your classes, perhaps you would not be so prone to violent outbursts."

He rolls his eyes at her and mumbles that he wants something to drink. She and Kurt start talking about collecting college-level textbooks for Noah to occupy his time with, both of them fully focused on the assumption that he may be more likely not to act out violently towards his peers.

(If badass Puck could be calmed, maybe she would have her Noah around more.)

Finn eventually gets the conversation away from Noah's academic habits, but she keeps the idea in the back of her mind. The next time he shows up at her house to humor her attempts to get him to study, she hands him several of her daddy's old college textbooks and tells him to hang on to them until school starts so that he has something to do with his time.

He gives her a look that she can't quite read, but in the end mumbles his thanks. Then he asks if that offer of making out is still on the table.

She slaps his arm and rolls her eyes, then drags him to her living room where she has a stack of musicals that she wants him to see. He takes one look at the DVDs and tries to leave through the open window. She threatens to get his mother on her side as she clings to his back, making it impossible for him to fit through the frame.

Near the end of the summer, her psychiatrist informs her that she may be ready to go off the medication. The thought sends a thrill of panic through her spine—what if she isn't ready? She has kept many things from this man, and he doesn't seem to notice. Her fathers are supportive of the decision. They tell her that if she doesn't feel ready, then she can stay on the medication, but to seriously consider the doctor's professional opinion. She has to admit, she doesn't enjoy being dependent on a drug for stability.

So she agrees.

When school starts, she thinks she made the right decision. Sure, it's tough when she gets slushied. It's a bad start to her senior year. But Kurt is there next to her, dragging her off to the girl's bathroom, and Noah's already trying to punch whoever did it. She makes sure to thank Mike and Artie for stopping Noah from getting in trouble later that day.

The pornographic pictures are no longer being drawn by her formerly-Cheerio teammates and she sees the three of them scrubbing away the markings several times over her first week. Noah is sent to detention after he manages to land a hit on the next person who attempts to slushie Rachel while he's around.

She doesn't bother letting him know that she was hit by one while totally alone. It doesn't matter. It didn't send her into a funk, so why bother bringing it up?

As the weeks into school wear on, she finds herself struggling more and more. Her doctor warned her that there might be a slight dip in her moods after she went off the pills, but she wasn't expecting the strength of the downer. A part of her wonders if that's normal, or if something is wrong.

But then she can't get her head out of it, and she stops wondering if it's normal because she's too consumed by reading into _every little thing_. Any slight makes her feel jumpy, and she's constantly putting on an act around her teammates to fool them. No one mentions her pretenses, which both relieves her and makes it worse.

Jacob Ben-Israel tugs her into an empty classroom before Glee practice one day. She is trapped with him, and just as she's preparing for him to start making unwelcome advances he pulls out his cell phone and shows her a picture.

Her heart feels like it's seizing up. The picture is of Noah in the locker room, and clearly shows the long, twisted scar that runs parallel to his spine.

One of the first times the club had to change for a performance Noah scowled when the girls said that the boys had to face the wall. He didn't say anything but the mark is obvious, the scar tissue a dark red. She thinks his displeasure had more to do with having his back to a room of people than with showing them the mark, because Noah is not shy about his body—there is no hesitation when he strips his shirt off, and she's called him an exhibitionist more than once (to a crooked smile, laughs, and the tang of sunblock at the lake).

What's on his back, though, has rarely featured in gossip around school. It is taboo. She doesn't know what he tells the girls he's been with, because she—and the club—never heard a word about it. Like theatre kids, they've had to get used to making use of the dressing rooms with limited space and time. Sometimes it makes the incestuous part of their whole little family a bit too weird. But there are some things that they simply don't talk about—weight; muscles, or lack thereof; tattoos. Scars.

But as she looks at the picture on Jacob's phone, she remembers how the club avoids talking about it. At first it was because they were all still a bit afraid of Noah. Now he is no longer their bully; he is one of them, a male vocal lead, their muscle and protector. He is their friend.

And she would do anything to protect her friends.

Jacob knows that. This picture is a threat. She looks at him as he denotes an absurd amount of stories he could post that give the scoop on the mystery. Unless, of course, she lets him get a little of what he wants in order to secure his silence. His wriggling eyebrows make her feel like puking, and she wishes that she could think of a way to stop him.

But she's done this before, for Quinn, when she was pregnant and Jacob was threatening to post the story on her. "What do you want?"

"Just a little friendly time with you," he says. "I heard you spent a lot of time with Puck over the summer, and I'm sure you know something that could be fun for both of us." His insinuation makes her feel a mix of squeamish and disappointed, which in turn has to be shoved away. She's dealing with _this_ right now (_not_ her undisclosed, inadvisable attraction to her friend).

"I refuse to do any sexual favors for you. Your options are these: you refrain from posting the story, which I assure you is a serious breach in journalistic integrity, and I will give you the bra I am currently wearing. Or you post the story, and I let Noah know that you asked for my lingerie." His face pales and he sputters, but she holds up a hand. "Unless, of course, you would rather I tell him that you are attempting to deal in sexual favors." His face drains of all color. "Either option, I wouldn't be lying to him."

He gives in under the condition that she hands it over right then and there, so that he knows it's actually hers. She pleads to God that her shirt isn't too thin and thanks him because it's not white.

Her stomach feels tight again when he gets a disturbing look on his face upon seeing that her bra is silky and pink. She crosses her arms as Jacob sticks it in his pocket and leaves the room with an over-the-shoulder promise that the story will stay off the blog. She ignores his final leering glance at her chest as he departs.

Pulling herself together takes a little bit too long, and she is late to Glee practice. Everyone looks at her as she walks in but she ignores them all and apologizes to Mr. Schuester for her tardiness. Taking a seat, she tries to square her shoulders and pretend that she isn't hyperaware of her lack of bra.

It hits her about five minutes into Glee practice that she just made another deal with Jacob Ben-Israel.

She is no stranger to giving him small things to keep his interest at bay. Like she once said, she is willing to do anything short of nudity or animal cruelty to do what it takes to achieve her goals. This time, though, has left her feeling incredibly dirtier than ever. She's not sure Jacob will be placated by anything less next time—and she's certain there will be a next time.

What's worst, though, is that this is high school. She's not even out in the real world yet and already feels like a shameful whore. She did nothing sexual and still feels like her skin is unclean. This feeling is so subversive, has been building ever since Jacob's interest started, that she cannot fight both it and the steady pull of her sinking stomach. She struggles to keep herself together throughout practice, focusing as she always has before in order to stop herself from thinking about it too much.

In the last few minutes, after they finish one of their numbers, Santana grabs her by the shoulder and runs her hand down her back. Rachel jumps away from her in shock, demanding to know just what Santana is up to.

The ex-Cheerio smirks. "You're not wearing a bra." Rachel refuses to look at anyone else. "You were totally wearing one in last period today. I _knew_ something was up with you being late."

She wants to crawl into the ground and stay there. Everyone is staring at her. She struggles to come up with something to say. "I don't know what you're talking about."

Santana rolls her eyes and reaches for her shirt. "Then show me."

Rachel screams and slaps her hands away as Santana tries to lift her shirt up, and then Mr. Schuester is between them with both hands extended. "It's none of our business," he says, face a bright shade of red. "Santana, you are way out of line."

She wants to curl up somewhere and let everything suck her under.

Logically, she knows that Santana merely smelled scandal and went for it, wanting to know for the sake of knowing. But the wave of pressure is there, and she has half a mind to let it push her down. She doesn't want to deal with her teammates thinking such things about her, when she did it _for_ _them_. Why don't they appreciate it?

A hard hand grabs her by the shoulder. She doesn't bother fighting back as he turns her around. Maybe she should fight. But she's so tired, she doesn't want to.

Noah leans in, forcing her to look at him. There is an intense scowl on his face. "What's going on, Berry?" he asks. His face is sharper. Angry. He's boiling over, and it appears directed toward her. Her face feels hot.

"Nothing."

"Bullshit." When she doesn't, he leans in closer, a hand landing on her shoulder. "I saw Jewfro stalking you in the halls before practice. Dude's freaking weird when it comes to you. And you've been off this whole time." His hand is gripping her shoulder too tightly. "So what happened?"

The pain shocks her, a jolt that makes her mouth loosen up. Her eyes dart around the room, going from face to face. Everyone is staring at them, even Mr. Schuester—who looks like he wants to interfere, but also doesn't quite know how to. "It's not what Santana was implying, but I can't say anything about it."

He raises an eyebrow. "You're not leaving without explaining."

She _just wants to leave_. If that means telling, then so be it. She keeps in mind that Mr. Schue is in the room when she says, "I was made aware that someone wanted to post a story on a blog that I would prefer not be, and so made a bargain to keep it from going online."

She can almost hear crickets chirp.

Then Santana barks, "Bitch said _what_?" Rachel isn't sure whether it's herself or Jacob that Santana is referring to, nor does she care. Her limbs feel incredibly heavy. Their eyes are too heavy on her. She feels judged and full of needles.

Noah squeezes shoulder and she looks up at him. There is fury on his face. Mr. Schue appears in her line of vision with his arms crossed. His face is still red, but she doesn't think he is solely embarrassed anymore. "Rachel, someone blackmailed you into giving them…clothing?"

She is so tired. She closes her eyes and nods once.

Mercedes says something about cutting someone, but she doesn't hear any other outbursts. With her eyes closed, she can imagine disgusted looks on their faces. Noah removes his hand and her shoulders slump, because he's so disgusted he can't touch her. But then he says a string of curse words and her eyes snap open as something crashes.

She stares at the chair that was kicked clear across the room, then looks to see that Finn and Mike are converging on Noah, who has yet to stop cursing and seems eager to reach a music stand. The rest of her teammates are outside the scope of her tunnel vision. All she sees with clarity is Noah, because he's furious.

But not at her. At Jacob. His curses make that clear.

That's what throws her a rope, what lets her move her feet and dart into what seems to be danger. She physically places herself between him and the music stand, reaching up and pulling his face to hers, making him look her in the eyes. She sees the anger bleed away, the blind fury clearing when she's in the middle of his intended path of destruction.

She tells him to cut it out, that he can't do anything about it.

"_Fuck_ yes I can. I'm going to _beat_ Jewfro's _face_ in."

"_No_, you're not." She grabs his hand. "Then he'll think I went back on my word. I said that I wouldn't tell you, thus sparing him grievous bodily harm, in order to keep him from increasing the terms again."

Noah is most definitely unhappy with this, but breathes heavily through his nose and stops resisting Finn's grip on his arms. Then he tilts his head to the side. "Again?" She blinks as his eyes narrow. "Berry, have you done this before?"

She doesn't realize her eyes dart to Quinn, and then it's too late to stop herself. Noah follows her gaze, and the two are confused until Quinn's eyes widen. She places a hand on her stomach.

Noah's expression goes a few shades darker. "Rachel."

Her shoulders fall again. "I didn't know what else to do, he wanted to post it and so I tried to get him not to, but he wanted—never mind, but—"

"No 'never mind'," Noah snaps, "_what_ did he _want_?"

Then Mr. Schuester steps in and says they're going to the principal. Rachel wants to protest some more, but Noah's giving her this look that says he will pick her up and throw her over his shoulder if he has to, and the rest of her teammates are looking at her like they'll help him.

Most of them have to leave because practice is over and they have other commitments, but Noah, Santana and Quinn do not and flatly refuse to leave.

So they proceed to head toward the office, and none of her three teammates will wait outside. She ends up telling Principal Figgins about the two blackmail incidents, and figures that she'll mention the rest of her encounters with him only if necessary. As is, Figgins has been threatened by her legal rants one too many times not to take her seriously.

They're at school for about an hour after practice should have ended, but the part of her that's no longer sinking is uplifted by the way people have gathered around her again. Their support means everything to her. It's drawing her out of that sinking place.

Noah offers her a ride home from school, which is convenient because it puts off telling her fathers for at least a little while longer. Her car is at the mechanics this week and she would have had to call her daddy, which meant she would have had to tell him about the incident.

The ride is quiet. She tries not to fidget nervously, but she can't help feeling anxious. She thought Noah would ask her questions about what happened, but he has not said a word after they climbed into the vehicle. She watches him out of the corner of her eye and his forehead is creased with deep thought. She stays silent while he thinks, privately fearing that he is forming a solidly bad opinion of her.

He pulls into her driveway and, to her surprise, stops the car. She stares at the side of his face, waiting for him to say something. Her chest is feeling very tight by the time he finally asks, "We're friends, right, Rachel?"

Noah finally looks at her. His eyes are darker than normal. She nods slowly, wondering why he's asking. Does he not want to be friends with her anymore? Her body feels too much pressure, all over.

Instead of dumping her as a friend, he asks, "Why didn't you tell me about it?"

But she doesn't know what to say. She takes a long, slow breath as she tries to think of how to say it. "Well, the first time we weren't friends. And this time, there wasn't much opportunity for me to say anything."

He shakes his head. "No way there are only those two incidents. Dude is creepy fixated on you. I thought it wasn't too bad, or that you were handling it, but obviously I was wrong. Why didn't you tell anybody before now?"

She swallows and rubs a key between her fingers. She kind of still wants to go take a bath. "I didn't want you to worry about it. I'll do whatever I can to protect my friends."

"You did that last time. So which one of your friends are you protecting now?"

She can't really look at him, but knows that she should say it. He really has the right to know. "A story about that scar on your back." He stiffens beside her and she knows that if she doesn't reassure him, he'll go off the edge of whatever control he's maintaining. "He threatened to make up a story to go along with a picture he'd obtained. It appears that he was slinking around the locker rooms. Honestly, the picture was probably an excuse. He wanted sexual favors from me."

Noah growls. The sound is somewhat terrifying and thrilling at once. She glances at his face to see that rage again. She waits until he is capable of talking. "I hate that he used me like that. To get at you."

She reaches out and places her hand on his arm. "I'm a bit flattered." He looks at her with wider eyes than she's ever seen on him, and she has to choke out a laugh at it. "We're such good friends that he knows threatening you is serious. It's nice to see that our friendship is so widely acknowledged."

He grimaces. "Crazy," he says. It comes out as a whisper. He slings an arm around her to pull her close, which soothes the small hurt from his insult. She swears that there's a faint smile on his face now, and he says he's still going to hit Jacob. She slaps his arm.

Her sinking stomach is no longer being twisted up. She doesn't really want to go to the garage anymore, because that would make him sad and angry again.

So she stays outside with him long into the afternoon.

* * *

He fell asleep at some point out of sheer exhaustion. Then his ma is shaking him awake, and he sees that his fellow gleeks are stretching and yawning, too. He gives them a cursory check before focusing on his ma.

She squeezes his shoulder and waits until everyone is more or less aware of what's happening around them. "Rachel has been awake for a few hours and has been moved to the psychiatric ward for observation. Her doctor has been here." Puck straightens up, hanging on her words. "We cleared up what happened—he was not in his office when the hospital in New York called, and his secretary was the one who passed the information along. Apparently he did not think to check Rachel's file when he called, and if he had he would have known the doctor should have handled it himself."

The secretary is now on his hit-list. His friends are shaking their heads in disbelief, and Mr. Schue even asks, "What was he thinking?"

His ma shakes her head. He can see that she's disgusted, but there's also a weary slump in her shoulders. "It's just one of those mindless mistakes that makes no sense." She shakes her head. "If he had been following protocol, he would have known that Rachel stopped taking her anti-depressants a few months ago, when her psychiatrist thought she could handle things without the help of drugs."

Rachel's psychiatrist? _Sucks_. He wants to strangle the bastard. He doesn't feel like being understanding about the secretary—dude is a straight-up moron—and now the doc's on an even worse place on his hit-list. Obviously, she _wasn't_ ready. He scowls at his ma, and she pats his shoulder. "During the first forty-eight hours in psychiatrics, she's not allowed to have visitors. But she's back on the anti-depressants and her doctor assures us that she won't be a high-risk patient. You can all talk to her in two days."

He's not the only one to protest, but she holds up a hand and repeats sternly, "Forty-eight hours. She's been in there for three already, and I assure you that she's in good hands."

"Yeah, with some asshole doctor who thought she was fine," he snaps.

His ma puts her hands on her hips and her lips are thinner than normal. "Yes, well, he's not in charge of her care at the moment. Our staff is taking care of her, and he's just a consultant." Artie mutters something about consultants being useless. His ma's eyes are sad as she says, "I'm sorry. It's a standard for our patients' health. Rachel needs some time to recover. She's going through something very difficult, and it's made all the more complicated by her mental state."

They put up token protests, of course. Puck wants to kick up a huge fuss, but his short nap didn't do much to his self-control. He's still just about ready to blow up at any given moment, and seeing her in any state is not going to make it easier to keep a grip on his own head.

His ma quiets them with calm negotiating skills. She's pulled some strings to get herself assigned exclusively to the psychiatric ward for the near future—it's actually where she started working as a nurse, although for the past couple years she's been mostly in the ER. But now, she's making it her mission to be there to look after Rachel, and she promises to give her messages from them and let her know that they're coming to see her as soon as they are allowed.

The pad of paper in her pocket quickly becomes loaded down with the scribblings of his friends and teammates, but he holds off until they're done clamoring around the paper to grab it for himself. He hesitates for a second, staring at a blank little page, and finally scratches out:

_We are talking about this. Until then, please just don't go. I'm not, so you can't. Wish I could see you, but my ma will be there the two days we can't. Anything you need, let her know. _

_I'll keep an eye on your gleeks. _

Then, almost as an afterthought, he adds his name. He doesn't know what everyone else wrote and doesn't bother to check, just handing the paper over to his ma and letting her press a kiss to his forehead. Then she's out the door, and the rest of them are trying to figure out what to do.

Miss Pillsbury eventually gets the ball rolling, reminding them that they can't sit there for two days and wait, that Rachel wouldn't want them to put their lives on hold. She gets them all to agree to go home and rest, and everyone almost absentmindedly adds her cell phone number to their phones "just in case they need to talk". Mr. Schue adds that they can call him, too, which is kind of just understood.

The gleeks pull themselves up, head out the door in clusters, and he realizes that he has to drop people off and shit but he's totally not okay to drive. He needs to punch something. Like, now.

Finn notices when they're outside the hospital. He takes Puck's keys right out of his hand and tells Blaine and Kurt something in this low, totally not subtle way as they approach his truck, but he can't bring himself to care. He's holding the loose threads of himself together, he can't think of anything else.

They don't head to the Hudson/Hummel house. Finn drives to this spot that's between his and Puck's houses, where there's an old cabin that no one owns anymore. It's about half a mile into the woods, and the car can't really get all the way there so they stop just off the road, where no one can see them. Puck throws himself out of the car and takes off, knowing the path by heart.

The red takes over by then and he just lets it, knowing that he'll end up where he was headed and that Finn will know how to handle him if, by some chance, he doesn't make it there. He just needs to bash something to pieces right now, and the shack is the perfect place for that.

They found it when they were preteens. Puck was starting to have a harder and harder time controlling the blackout rage that could consume him. He and Finn were out exploring when they found the place, and it used to be just a cool hangout spot. Then it became a good place to blow off steam, for either of them. And then they found that Puck's red rages could be handled here pretty easily, so they made a deal. Whenever his control threatened to break, this was where he would automatically start heading.

Mike found out about the place once when Puck was hit by the rage and Finn made them drive out here and had to explain it to him. It's one of those things that they don't really talk about and the causes of which have not been explained. Finn only knows as much as he does because of the whole being-there-during-it. Besides them, Santana knows that he can handle her similar explosions because it's something they share, and that's the exact amount of detail he has given her. Now Kurt and Blaine know, because Finn definitely has to explain why they stopped here and Puck disappeared into the trees.

He comes out of the red place with scratches on his arms and bruised knuckles, and his right foot hurts. The cabin looks like a whirlwind came through it, and his throat feels a little sore. He was probably shouting every curse word he could think of.

He drops to his knees in the middle of the room. He used to worry about this rage when it would overtake him, this berserker overload of emotion that he can only suppress and even then, has to come out eventually. He never knew exactly what he would do while out of his mind, and it kind of freaks him out that it happens.

One more thing he can blame on his dad.

When he comes out of the trees Kurt and Blaine are sitting on the edge of the truck bed and Finn's leaning against it. Finn is the only one not surprised to see him a little worse for the wear; the other two look a little stunned. He holds out his hand for the keys and Finn just raises his eyebrow. "You're limping."'

"Am not." He holds out for a few minutes before shrugging and admitting that he may have busted his toe.

Finn offers no judgment, just nods his head toward the passenger's side. "You're not driving until that's taken care of."

He would argue, but part of the routine is that he doesn't. It's part a silent thanks to Finn for putting up with his issues, and part exhaustion because letting everything out his way is draining. He climbs back in the truck, Kurt and Blaine squeezing themselves in the middle. He leans against the door and stares blankly ahead.

"You and Santana."

He casts a sideways glance at Kurt, who's surprisingly looking straight ahead instead of at him. "Yeah. Took a whole lot of fuckin' control." He leans his head back and closes his eyes. "Only thing that helped was knowing that I could come out here."

He's glad when the questioning stops there. He's sure that they have more questions, and Finn probably wasn't very open about it. Dude could be tight-lipped. But he also thinks that everyone's just drained.

Finn forces him to come inside and let his mom take care of his hands before he's allowed to go. He doesn't let himself stay this time because he has to pick his sister up from where she's been stashed with the rest of the gleek siblings. Sometimes he crashes at the Hudson's place, 'cause Finn's mom has a vague idea of what the whole thing is about. But he's sure that Mr. Hummel doesn't know shit about his coping mechanisms because he's getting looks over it. He leaves it up to Finn and his mom to handle the explanation, and excuses himself with a weary but heartfelt thanks.

He picks up his sister, who notices the bandages on his hands but doesn't say a word. She just scoots close to him and tucks herself under his arm, asking if Rachel is okay. He tells her that Rachel's fine and they fall into silence the rest of the way home. He keeps his arm around her, because he would never say it but after he goes crazy in that shack he kind of needs to know that people are around. He's always afraid he'll hurt his ma or sister. When they're close by after his berserker rampages, he feels better. He thinks his sis knows that.

When he gets home, there's no reason for him to be awake anymore so he just collapses on his bed.

* * *

She is struggling again.

Going off her medication was, perhaps, not the best idea. But she's swinging back and forth now, and although the doctor has the best intentions, she doesn't really trust him because he didn't tell her it would be such a roller coaster. She wants to feel better, but it is harder and harder for her to understand that maybe she should talk to him about this. The thought seems to get swamped underneath other feelings.

Despite that, her friends are helping in their own unique ways. She considers it every now and then, but her last attempt was halted by her conversation with Noah after Jacob's latest blackmail stunt. Since then, she hasn't been as close to the edge. She thinks this may mean that she's getting better. (Maybe that's not a lie this time).

When they go off for winter break, she's in a high mood. Her dads are going to New York for a few days, and she wanted to stay with her friends. She may want to go, but she has time until Broadway will call for her. Until then, she wants to solidify her friendships with her other Glee club members. So she decides to stay, and it has been so long since her last attempt—and she's been doing so well—that they don't worry about leaving her. She'll be busy with her friends, anyway, and there's a party at her house the second day they're gone.

She wakes up a little late and doesn't feel completely up anymore, but she squares her shoulders and looks herself in the eye in the bathroom mirror. She pumps herself up for the party and starts getting everything ready. She knows that most of her friends will be present, but that Noah's attendance is uncertain. He likely will have to watch his sister, which would be disappointing. But they are all going to have a marvelous time.

About mid-afternoon, her phone rings.

She answers with polite confusion, because her psychiatrist's number lights up the screen. But when an unfamiliar secretary starts telling her what's going on, she feels her good, chirpy mood dissipate like smoke in the wind. It leaks away from her.

One of her fathers is dead. The other may be joining him and she won't know until it is too late.

They are leaving her.

Halfway through the phone call, she knows where she's headed. She has a literal lifeline on her ear now, and the secretary is babbling on about possibly setting up an appointment to see the psychiatrist later that day. Her voice is mechanical when she tells him that it won't be necessary, that she'll be fine.

The feelings are eating her organs, her skin. She wants nothing more than to curl up, and the secretary bids her to have a nice day and hangs up. Her knees hit the floor and arms go around her stomach. She tries to think, tries to figure out what to do, but there's nothing beyond the idea (certainty) that she will lose them both. They were the only ones she could count on to be there for her no matter what. And now, there's a strong chance she'll lose them both in one motion.

_What's the point? _

The elusive thoughts from the back of her mind come to the front.

She drags herself up the stairs at some point and finds herself staring into her bathroom. Dark and silent. The tub looks so comfortable. It's nice and calm in here unlike her insides. There's something wrong inside her, and she knows it, but she can't think of why or how when she wants so much to curl up underwater.

But she had two fathers, so maybe she should have two ways to die. A failsafe. She is surprised she actually thought the word, 'die', she never has before. But a failsafe, that's good, it will ensure that no one can stop her this time. She has avoided 'die' until now. Noah stops her every time.

He can't stop her this time. He's not supposed to be here.

She leaves her bathroom to seek something out. There are kitchen utensils that could work, but she doesn't like blood. The car was her first, so it would be poetic but she cannot combine it with the tub. She decides on pills, the ones that dad has left over from a few months ago. She saved them, although they don't know it. They haven't checked her room for hidden caches of pills before, because her usual methods have been so reliable. She's adding something new to the mix. How funny.

In the kitchen, she pulls out a glass for water. She'll have enough time to go back upstairs. As she takes the first one, she feels a calm settle in her stomach. There aren't many pills, and she doesn't know if it will work or not, but since she doesn't need the medication it should have some kind of effect. There's no turning back, it's done, he can't stop her, none of them can. It's not as if they would, because there's no point. She stands there for a while, staring at the bottle on the counter, at the half-empty glass.

And then, of course, the doorbell rings.

Her heart almost stops as she realizes that someone has come. It's kind of fitting, but she also doesn't know how to feel. She wants someone to be here, but she doesn't want anyone to be there. Why is someone there?

She can't remember until she opens the door—the party. There was supposed to be a party.

She puts on her mask, but it's hard to tell if she's fooling anyone. And she's starting to feel a little strange. But she attempts to be light and cheery, and reminds herself a few times that she should go upstairs after they're settled in. Because Noah is here, and he wasn't supposed to be. They are all here, and none of them needs to see her fall away. It will be okay once she's gone, but she doesn't want them to deal with her while she's fading. It would make them sad.

But then they won't stop asking her what is wrong. And Noah is looking at her with this expression that makes her feel so sad and so sorry, and she doesn't want them to feel that way but she's also sinking into herself. Her hands feel very heavy and she hopes it doesn't hurt Noah to support them. She didn't want any of them to see her like this.

And then Santana is screaming at her. They're mad at her, they hate her. Now she knows it. They aren't here for her anymore. And she's sorry, she didn't mean to disappoint them but don't they see, this is how it has to be?

Because what's the point?

* * *

The days before they can see Rachel are endless. He hates how long time lasts while they are waiting.

He wants to tell her how angry he is, how much it hurts that she wanted to leave, how much he cares about her. (STFU. He almost lost her, he can get as sappy as he fucking wants). He wants to hold her tightly in his arms and he wants to shout at her and he just wants to go hit something again.

And his ma saw his hands. She knows what it means when he comes home like this. So she's not letting him go back out to the shack to let go of some of those pent-up emotions, and instead he's had to actually talk about how he feels to the therapist again. (And he'll never admit out loud that it actually makes him feel better).

By the time the day rolls around, he's kind of nervous about seeing her. The gleeks have come up with another plan besides the sharing-and-caring circle-time. They've made use of the past days to meet up every chance they could, mostly because they didn't really want to be alone and then it kind of evolved from there. Mr. Schue got all teary-eyed 'the healing power of music' on them a few times. That shit makes some of them feel useful.

Puck thinks that it's not about healing her, it's about showing that they care using the medium of expression that Rachel Berry just _gets_.

The eleven of them carpool to the hospital, dressed normally even though they're going to be performing. That's not the only weird thing about this whole set-up, but at least it's a relatively mild normal that keeps them babbling about nothing instead of thinking about what they're going to be doing soon.

His ma meets them at the doors and leads them through the hospital, up to the third floor. She tells them all that Rachel knows they're coming and she was touched by their written messages for her. Rachel might be in for two more days, since her dads aren't okay yet. The hospital got in touch with Shelby Corcoran the day before, though. She gave the doctors permission to do what-the-fuck-ever to help Rachel and is on her way from France with Beth.

He doesn't know how to feel about that. 'Cause he just doesn't talk about Beth to anyone, not even Quinn. And he's going to have to talk to Rachel about it at some point. In addition to other shit.

They go through a kind of security checkpoint and his ma has to vouch for what he's carrying. They go through a hall and enter a large common-area room, where a bunch of psych ward patients are sitting around.

He looks for her as soon as they're in the big room, and recognizes the back of her head immediately. Everyone is wearing the same cloth gowns, but he knows her anywhere. Her hair is braided but messy, like she's slept with it like that. She's alone in a corner, writing something on a pad of paper. She has a neat stack of sheets in front of her that are already filled.

They cluster together awkwardly, aware that they're attracting a lot of attention from other patients.

He has his guitar, and his ma told him they can use the piano that's in the room. It's a bit bare-bones with only have two instruments, but they sounded pretty good during practice when they tried it out. Blaine takes a seat at the piano and Puck stands at the other end of the line. Everyone else is lined up and ready, and it's a bit impromptu but everyone kind of gets that this is where they're going to start. He looks over at his ma, where she's just finished conversing with a woman in a white coat, and she nods.

That's their cue.

Kurt brought up the song when they were first talking about what to sing for Rachel—because, yeah, what else would they do but sing to her? The problem was finding a song, and no one could really think of an appropriate one until Kurt jumped like something stung him and declared one that he was adamant they use. Little twerp wouldn't listen to any other suggestions, and the girls backed him up when he declared that Rachel would understand what the song was saying.

Blaine starts playing the piano.

Rachel's back stiffens and she turns around quickly. He bites his lip at the pale, tired face that stares back at him. She looks like she hasn't had a good night's sleep in a very long time. There are lines that he's never seen on her face before, and the perpetual cheer he was used to from school is totally gone. She blinks twice at them and the faintest smile starts to form on her face.

Then Finn begins tapping drumsticks on the back of a chair, and Puck starts with the guitar to round out the sound. It takes her a moment, but he sees the exact second she comprehends the lyrics because her jaw goes slack.

The arrangement wasn't easy, and they split the song into parts so it wasn't a solo. Everyone was happy with the way it turned out. Puck can't tear his eyes away from Rachel's face, though, the whole time they are singing. He watches as her eyes fill with tears and the expression on her face goes through a multitude of emotions.

…_Let me be the one you call, if you jump I'm willing to fall._

_Lift you up and fly away with you into the night._

_If you need to fall apart, I can mend a broken heart._

_If you need to crash, then crash and burn, you're not alone…_

About halfway through the last lines of the song, she pushes her chair back and stands up. She walks toward him with those starry, glassy eyes, her lips twitching up and down as she smiles and tries not to sob at the same time. The whole group stays in place while the song ends, and she's almost to them when that last note fades.

He's not sure who moves first, but he knows that he shoves his guitar off in someone's hands at the same time as she's wrapping her arms around his neck because she almost gets tangled with the strap. And everyone else is reaching to touch at least some part of her; they're all in this cluster together, clinging to one another.

He is not ashamed to admit that it was enough to make him tear up a bit, too.

Eventually he releases his bear hug on her and she gives everyone an individual hug and thanks them tearfully for their musical performance. That's when he notices the other patients were clapping, too. And the doctors and nurses are smiling at them. He guesses his ma was right about everyone enjoying the music. Even if it was mostly for Rachel, he's kind of glad that they did something everyone else can appreciate.

She stops hugging everyone at some point and now she's just kind of standing there, staring. No one really knows what to say, how to open up a conversation, but Puck doesn't want this to go down in the middle of a room of other people. He reaches out and tucks Rachel under his arm and asks his ma if this is the only place for them to sit. Knowing vaguely what the group has planned, she leads them through a short hallway to a more private room. "They use this for group therapy sessions," she tells them, and Rachel nods as if she knew that already.

His ma leaves. The rest of them take seats. Rachel fidgets with her hands and tries not to look at them at the same time they're looking at her.

Miss Pillsbury offered to sit in and mediate the conversation, but they all told her they wouldn't need it. With this silence, he wonders if they do need her to start them off, but he also knows he doesn't really want anyone beyond the twelve of them in this room to know what he's going to be telling.

He catches Finn's eye across the circle, and just like that the dude gets one of those bursts of courage. He blurts out, "I think I killed somebody."

And…that's not what he meant, but he'll see where dude's going with this.

At least Rachel's looking at someone. With horror, but still.

Finn goes on. "It wasn't on purpose. His name was Walter Runholdt, our mailman. He was a really nice guy—I remember talking to him sometimes, when I was in the yard playing and he was putting letters in mailboxes. Even the dogs liked him, you know? He was part of the neighborhood, too." He has a slightly spacey look. "Then I had my first driving lesson. I knew the basic idea but I hadn't tried before. My mom was teaching me. I pulled out of the driveway, went about half a block, and I just—I didn't see him. And I couldn't stop in time. He went flipping over the car." He looks at his hands. "I was apologizing and he was telling me to calm down, he'd be fine, but he also couldn't seem to get up. He went in an ambulance, and I'm not supposed to know this, but he didn't make it to the hospital. The doctors told me that his heart had given out on the way there for unrelated reasons, but I can't help thinking that if I hadn't hit him, he wouldn't have died."

Yeah, Puck remembers Finn thinking himself into hyperventilating. Twice. (There was a reason the image automatically cooled the dude off, masochistic as it was).

In his own prima-donna way, Kurt primly folds his hands and lifts his chin to capture their attention. "I don't have very many secrets from this group—the consequences of my sexuality in this school are most likely going to be my secret when I meet new friends, but you've all been there through most of it. Even my dad." He smiles faintly. "What I have never truly wanted to tell anyone is that when my mother died, I was there. She had been sick for a while, and I was in the hospital with my dad to visit her. He went out for a few minutes to talk to the doctor." He closes his eyes. His cheeks are getting a little pink. "She tried to say something, but I never heard what it was. I closed her eyes so that when my dad came back, he wouldn't know. I never told him."."

Over the summer, Kurt tried alcohol at one of their gleek parties. Puck had to take care of him while his brother and boyfriend were trashed. He learned that Kurt was a depressed, talkative drunk.

Blaine takes Kurt's hand and offers Rachel a sympathetic smile. "I know I haven't talked much about my family, and you've all been incredibly patient and not pestered me with questions. I want to thank you for that. I—" he paused, eyes meeting Puck's very briefly. "My father is homophobic," he admits. "And he kicked me out when I came clean to my family. That's why I've never introduced my parents to any of you. For all intents and purposes, I'm an emancipated minor. I actually live with my friend Wes and his family. My mom makes sure I always have money, but I tend to try not to ask her for anything. Firstly, she may be in charge of the finances, but I know that it's hard on her whenever he does pay attention to them. And secondly, she won't stand up for me against him."

He found that out a while ago, those times when he gave Blaine a ride home after practices when Finn and Kurt were otherwise busy.

Mercedes is on Kurt's other side, and she takes his other hand as she looks down. "It's probably not much of a secret after the whole Cheerio thing, but I've had issues with food and body size almost all my life. It's not even about the teasing, because my mom and church is full of beautiful, big black women. I look at them and I know anything that people say is wrong, because they are so strong and amazing. I want to be just like them. A lot of the time, I'm throwing around my attitude and focusing on presenting myself a certain way, because I want to believe it so much. I want to feel only like I appreciate myself, what I have and what I represent. But at the same time, I can't quite shake the feelings, and I can't really ignore what other kids and the media say." She makes a kind of half-hearted laugh. "I don't think I've ever come out and said to anyone, 'I have had multiple eating disorders'."

"Beautiful" at the assembly aside, he had wondered if that was the first time she had problems with her body image.

He looks around the circle, to see if anyone else is going to take the floor. Those who've spoken are almost relaxed now, while their remaining teammates seem to be building up the courage to say something. He glances at Rachel and bites his lip when he sees that her eyes are wide and darting between everyone who has spoken. There's a little crease between her eyebrows and a few wet trickles make their way down her cheeks. He wants her to stop crying. But he seems to be having trouble finding his own voice.

Artie's hands fall to the wheels of his chair. "Like Mercedes said—admitting it is the hardest part, even if you know it's not much of a surprise. And if it's kind of obvious." He snorts and looks at his legs. "I was in a car accident when I was young. When I found out I'd never walk again, I got into this funk and couldn't find my way out of it for a really long time. Sometimes it was so hard to get through the day, learning a new way of life in which I was stripped of a lot of independence others take for granted. I was in middle school when I first thought about what it would be like not to be alive." He bites his lip. "It took a lot of counseling for me to find a new normal, and I needed a lot of help to get there. I almost gave up once. Sometimes I still need to talk to someone about it, because it can grow to feel like a big weight."

This was part of an actual conversation they had, on the side of the road while taking a break from tutoring/community service.

Quinn lays her hand on Artie's arm for a moment. "I had post-partum depression after…" Her eyes meet his and her shoulders straighten just a little. "After Beth was born. My summer was pretty tough, especially since my mom and I weren't completely okay again. I had a lot of rough spots. I wanted to hurt myself a few times, because it was so overwhelming. Sometimes I think about it, and worry that if I had kept Beth, I would have tipped over the edge to post-partum psychosis. I could have hurt my baby, and that hurts more than giving her up did. Terrifies me, really." She and Rachel look each other in the eye and Puck swears something is passing between the two of them. "My mom thinks I should be ashamed, of having her and of being, in her mind, weak. But I'm proud that I made it through, because there were times when I didn't know if I could ever get out of that darkness."

He was aware of this at the time of. Her mom blamed him and made sure he knew it. He did whatever he could to help her, and that she's okay now makes him hope that he was helpful.

Tina pushes her hair back from her face and her eyes keep darting nervously to her boyfriend. "Bullying got pretty bad for me in middle school. And sometimes," she says, and pauses. She glances around the circle, stands up. She lifts her skirt and Puck has to bite his tongue against an inappropriate comment, 'cause the mood of the room is still serious. Instead of describing what she wants to tell them, he knows that she's showing them. When she turns her leg to expose her inner thigh, there's a line of little white scars. He takes a second to glance at Mike's face and can tell that dude knew but hadn't seen them yet. "I had to hide them, and I felt like such a walking cliché, and that only made it worse. I haven't for a long time, but sometimes when things at school are pretty bad I get the urge to try it again."

She's the one person in the group he wasn't sure about. He knows it's cliché to assume because of the gloves, but it kind of fits that they lay a false trail.

Mike takes Tina's hand as she sits back down. He swallows hard and is jittery to a level Puck's seen only once before. He knows what his friend's going to say.

"I had a cousin," he starts, running a hand through his hair. "She was in her teens, and she'd watch me sometimes when I was a kid. I was just a kid, you know? I didn't really know—" Mike cuts himself off and looks across the circle, to him. "I was about eight years old when she had sex with me. She said if I ever told I'd destroy our family. A year later my aunt's job moved them to Georgia. It didn't stop from that first time up until they moved. And I never told my family." Tina's gripping his hand with both of hers. "In health class, I always wanted to go crawl under a rock somewhere. 'Cause this 'isn't supposed to happen to guys', and if it does then they're 'not even men' or something. I would argue, but the only thing that I can ever think to say is that I wasn't a man, I was a kid, but if I hadn't been it wouldn't make me any lesser than other guys."

Brittany reaches across Santana to lay her hand on Mike's other arm. She offers him a slightly vacant smile before looking at Rachel. "When I was little my uncle would touch me under my dresses. I didn't like it when he did that but he said that he could do what he wanted and no one would listen to me. I wanted him to stop so I finally went to my mom. She hit me on the head with a frying pan when I told her and said that I was lying." She takes Artie's hand with her free one and her smile turns slightly bewildered. "She never believed me."

Learning her secret was the weirdest. It was in health class when they were sitting in the back of the room, listening to a lecture on sexual abuse. He hadn't really known what to say, and her assurance that he was a good listener made him feel uncomfortable. It was during his more badass/asshole days. Even so, he never breathed a word of it to anyone, because who the fuck does that? Especially to someone like Brittany.

Santana drops her casual façade and leans forward. She bites her lip and looks at Puck, and he gives her the slightest nod. They both know what they have in common, though it's never really been discussed. "I have daddy issues. Mine is a manipulative asshole who likes mind games. That's why I tell it straight, but generally just hate people." She shifts in her seat and crosses her arms. "And when he is angry, he'll throw a punch at anything that moves. I can't remember a time when he wasn't like that. It's how I grew up. And I think, as a result, that I can't really handle too much emotion. I know you weren't really aware of it, Rachel, at your house, but everyone else has now seen me like that twice. I just—I go blind, everything clouds over. I think I destroyed a couple paintings and random pieces of furniture in your house." She offers an apologetic smile, but her eyes are a bit haunted. "I can't control myself when I'm like that. And I'm not good at suppressing it, not like Pu—" She bites her lip and meets his eyes.

"Not like me." His turn. But he's still kind of thinking, even though he's been thinking for two days, because he knows that he could go the easy way.

He looks at Rachel, sitting next to him. Her eyes are a little wide and dewy, and he knows she's remembering his off-hand comment about coming to with a nerd in one hand and a fire extinguisher in the other. And he decides that not only does he owe her a real secret, but he owes everyone in this room one. He's asked them to bare something of themselves, and as the former tormentor of half of them, he owes them a lot more than they owe him.

"You know that scar on my back." He doesn't wait for confirmation, doesn't phrase it as a question. Resting his elbows on his knees, he traces the tile lines with his eyes as he stubbornly pushes himself. "My dad was a mean drunk, and sometimes he'd go so stinking blind with it he wouldn't know who he was going after. That scar's because he was trying to go after my sister while she was in her crib. And I got in his way." He sighs. "San and I are pretty similar 'cause of this shit. I have a little control, but sometimes I just—there's this place in my head that I go to, and when I come out of it my fist is in someone's face."

He looks up and catches Finn's eye. All these years, they've never really talked about it. "When we were in middle school, Finn and I found this old shack between our houses. It eventually became a place I could go when I could feel my control slipping, and tear the walls apart with my bare hands." He runs a finger over his exposed knuckles, which are covered in violently deep bruises. "And usually tear myself up a bit, too. Having that place is the only thing that can help me hang on sometimes, when that rage is threatening to take over." He glances at Mike, at Kurt and Blaine. "I focus on it until I can actually get there. After years of practice I'm getting better at control."

There's this release of tension in the air. He can tell that some of them want to ask questions, the same way he kind of wants to ask others about their revelations. But at the same time, he knows that they aren't going any further today.

This isn't about them, after all.

He looks at Rachel. She has her hands clasped in her lap and it looking at every one of them in turn, asking each of them to explain what just happened. Since he kind of spearheaded this plan, he takes it upon himself to explain. "We all know this secret of yours now, Rachel, and it's kind of not fair. So now we're a bit more equal." She looks at him, and he adds, "We understand secrets. But we don't want you to go anywhere, no matter what you still haven't told us."

Mercedes says, "We all have stuff we don't want to talk about, but we are all here for each other. We all want to help each other."

She wipes a hand under her eyes and sniffles a little.

Kurt leans forward and says, "Honey, we might not all understand exactly what's going on in that head. But we do understand enough so that we can be there when it gets hard. We want you to get better and stay with us for a long time."

"What's the world without Rachel Berry?" Finn asks. He smiles at her when she lets out a little choking sob.

"A very empty place," Brittany says, not quite grasping the concept of rhetorical questions. But that's okay, Puck knows that her answer is a good addition. He reaches over and takes Rachel's hand.

She looks at him and hesitates, obviously wanting to say something, but she's so uncertain. It's completely unlike her, so different from the Rachel he thought he knew. Her face is a little tight around all corners, a flicker of emotion makes her face change, and she blinks slowly and deliberately. Then she clears her throat and says, softer than he's ever heard her voice, "Can I sing something?" She glances around the room, hands trembling. "T-to all of you?"

He's never heard Rachel Berry stutter.

It seems that no one can bring themselves to refuse her, not when she seems so fragile. She stands up and leads them out of the room, back to the common area where there are fewer patients than before. She takes a seat at the piano and fidgets for a moment, gesturing to the nearby couches and chairs. They all take seats, hesitant, and he bites his lip to keep from saying anything.

A part of him is wondering what she's up to, and another part is a little angry that she didn't acknowledge the magnitude of what just happened in the group-therapy room. Damn, they all just opened up, and—

She clears her throat again, and turns her head just enough to see all of them. Her voice is very soft. "I appreciate and value every word that you have shared with me, with everyone. It means—more than you can imagine, how much you're willing to open up to me. It truly and deeply honors me." She takes a deep breath. "So it's my turn to bare my soul to you, and even though you know the cold, hard facts you don't know what's been inside of me. And I think I owe you that."

"You don't _owe_—" Comes out of eleven mouths in different variations at the same time, and Rachel holds up her hands.

"I do, though. And if that's not reason enough for you, then—then let me let it out." Her eyes seem a little shinier. "Music is healing. If not because I should bare my soul, too, then because I want to let it out."

Puck looks at the rest of the gleeks, and they all exchange glances. Mercedes is the one to smile at Rachel, even though it's a little strained. "Let it out, then."

She nods, straightens her back and rests her hands on the piano keys. She starts playing a slow, long tune that he doesn't recognize, and then her voice joins the notes.

_The lights go out all around me,_

_One last candle to keep out the night._

_And then the darkness surrounds me._

_I know I'm alive but I feel like I've died…  
_

Her unusual hesitation starts to disappear as she goes on. He can see her bleeding into the song, her body starting to sway a little as she reaches for the keys. She glances at them when she finishes the chorus, and those eyes are shiny from tears. He doesn't really know what to do, but the song—it's hitting his chest, making his lungs feel tight and his skin stretched.

If she was paying attention, she would be trying to hide the tears that run down her cheeks. He knows that she cannot be in the same world as them right now, because there is just so _much_ in the music. He chances a glance away from her, at the nurses and doctors—all staring, their expressions a range of sad understanding and awe—then to his friends.

Mercedes stands, and the rest of the girls follow her example almost immediately. He doesn't need an engraved invitation, just tilts his head at his boys and they start moving around the piano.

When she starts the chorus the second time, the girls all join her. Rachel's hands don't stop moving, and she doesn't hesitate. Even through her tears, she seems to be able to see all of them. Puck edges closer to the piano bench, taking a seat. The boys don't know this song, and it sounds better with just the girl's voices, but he makes sure that he's next to her.

_After all this has passed, I still will remain_

_After I've cried my last, there'll be beauty from pain_

_Though it won't be today, someday I'll hope again_

_And there'll be beauty from pain—you will bring beauty from my pain_

The song is slow and long, sad. It seems to seep into the air once she passes the bridge. He watches her face as the female voices flow together into the end, the last notes on the piano trailing off. Her chest rises and falls rapidly, her eyes completely wet; she looks at each of her friends in turn as they stand, silent, around her.

He nudges her shoulder with his and brings her focus back to him. "Rachel." It's a question and a plea. He feels so torn, so thunderstruck—how could he have been oblivious to that much pain? How could she have hidden it from them?

Her fingers twist around one another. "I realize that this is an egocentric moment, because you're all here for me, and I want to recognize all of your challenges and struggles because goodness knows it took a phenomenal amount of courage to come here today and share, with everyone, what you—"

He gently places a hand over her mouth and she blinks at him. Removing his hand, he sums it up for her. "We're all fucking damaged, Berry." When she opens her mouth to protest his choice of phrasing, he is quick to add, "But we can all be damaged together. You've got us, and we're not going anywhere."

Then she's blinking back tears again. He's pretty sure it's the way she is included in that "we" that gets to her, because it took that statement to get her to stop fighting them. She's melting like hot wax and he's half afraid she'll spill right out of his arms. But instead, she's clinging to his shirt and crying. Then she pulls away a little and he hears her, "I'm so sorry" refrain again, but she can't get too much distance. He won't let her go and more bodies are gathering around them.

He was never one for group hugs before, and there have been a lot of them lately. But that's totally fine because he thinks he needs the human contact a little, too. His knuckles ache again.

* * *

She heals slowly. The medication takes a while to kick back in, and in the meantime she's stuck in the hospital. They don't want to release her yet, because her living father slipped into a coma. She isn't handling the news well and knows it. The medication is currently the only thing keeping her from slipping into that dark place. She talks about how she feels in group therapy. It doesn't make her feel very much better, and with her head clearer than it has been in a while, she decides that she needs a different psychiatrist. The nurses told her that they would make sure she knew her options before she left.

Her teammates stay with her for several hours that first day. After she had calmed down and their group hug broke, they pretended the serious talk did not happen. Instead, they lapsed into other topics, catching up with one another and talking about whatever came to mind. They reached for a bit of normal, ignoring Rachel's hospital gown and pretending that they were just hanging out. She greatly appreciated an opportunity for all of them to adjust to each other again, with the fresh revelations in the back of their minds.

When Shelby arrives, Rachel isn't entirely sure what she wants to happen. Her mother has not been a part of her life, not the way she wanted when she first met her and not the way she needs now. The two of them are not sure exactly how to relate to one another. But it helps that Shelby came back as fast as she could the minute she heard the news, even though it was difficult for her to fly from overseas with Beth. The concern there has gone a long way to making a bridge between Rachel and her mother.

But she is not eighteen, and with her fathers out of her life—as painful as it is to think about—she has to find somewhere to stay and Rachel knows it can't be with her mother. Their relationship is not close enough for the stability that she needs. The answer comes when Mercedes offers space for Rachel in her home, the same way she did for Quinn when the cheerleader was pregnant. The gesture makes her feel like crying.

She is never alone during visiting hours. Her friends seem to be taking shifts, but she knows they're not really organized enough to have set up a schedule of who would visit when. She doesn't see everyone every day, except for Noah. He makes a point to see her first thing and is the last person to stop by in the afternoon, twice a day like clockwork. Only he seems to have a schedule. That's why he is the one she asks for help with her next musical arrangement, and he readily agrees.

Winter Break is almost over when she is released from the hospital. She doesn't really want to go back to school, and she feels guilty that her problems have impeded their break activities. But Tina and Quinn reassure her that they will be with her every step of the way into school their first day back, and Noah holds her face between his palms and tells her that she only has to feel guilty for trying to take herself away from them, that as long as she never tries it again it does not matter that they spent a lot of the winter visiting her in the hospital.

She has made a lot of progress—with a new psychiatrist, too—by the time she walks into the school again. No one treats her differently, which is only a relief because it means that no one else knows and she wants to keep it that way. She doesn't want to deal with horrified looks or pity or disgust, because it would be hard to fight even if she doesn't care about any of them. She only cares that Artie cracks jokes at her side while Mike rolls him down the hall, and Brittany is playing with her hair while Tina is quietly, firmly at her side. Quinn, Santana and Mercedes wave as they pass in the other direction to their first period, and the blonde shares a look with Rachel and Tina. Kurt and Blaine have class on the other side of the school, and as she approaches Noah's locker, he and Finn look at the group and smile.

This is nothing new. They have all been in each other's company for most of the first semester, always seen together in different group combinations. But on the heels of what happened, it only drives the point home to her, brushing angrily past those voices in the back of her head—these people value her friendship. They are here for her, even when they have disagreements or problems.

When she walks into Glee practice that afternoon, almost everyone is already there. Tina had her last class, so the two of them walk in together. She wastes no time reaching for her teacher, whom she hasn't seen all day. She no longer has Spanish class, since she passed the AP test her junior year, and only sees him for Glee this year. Mr. Schuester's eyes are a little teary when he breaks their hug and he pats her on the shoulder. "I'm glad you're here, Rachel," he tells her, and they both know it means more than the obvious.

"Thank you, Mr. Schuester." She clears her throat and clasps her hands together. "If you don't mind, I would like to steal a moment of our time."

"By all means," he says, waving her to the center of the room. He takes a seat off to the side and she shifts on her feet, preparing herself.

She hasn't felt this nervous in front of an audience in a long time. Everyone looks at her, but she can see on their faces that they're just waiting patiently. Everything is still just the slightest bit off-kilter, ever since their group confessions in the hospital. They're all finding out how they fit together again, and she wants them to be comfortable within this circle again. More than that, she wants them to know that she really and fully understands what they have done for her. Their careful balance has been upset, because of her. Because they shared something secret to help her understand that they were there for her. And she doesn't know what else to do but sing, to show them that she will not let that be in vain. They can all be okay again.

Her cheeks feel a little funny, probably because she's so nervous. "I know things have been weird lately. What you've all shared—with me, with each other—was difficult, and I am overwhelmed, that you would be so open and honest with me and each other. So I prepared another number to share with you. It's perhaps a little unorthodox and personal," she says, shifting her feet uncomfortably. "But it's not just me this time. It's for all of you. All of us."

She gestures at Noah and he stands, his guitar in hand. The band is ready to go. Noah pulls up a stool, waiting for her to gesture that she's ready. She meets his eyes for a long moment and he nods at her, encouraging, and she responds in kind. He starts playing.

Rachel looks at all of them as the intro music starts playing. She sees recognition on the faces of her female friends when they hear the song starting, which doesn't surprise her much. They listened to the artist habitually while costume-brainstorming or hanging out during girls' nights.

She opens her mouth and starts singing. Her unusual hesitation starts to disappear as she feels the music, the lyrics. The girls and Kurt nod along, knowing the words and starting to mouth them with her. The rest of the guys are listening with their heads tilted.

She feels tears on her cheeks. From the expressions on the faces of her friends, they can see and understand how much emotion she is putting out there, how much they are seeing her insides through this song. Her eyes meet Noah's, and she feels a connection—tangible, acknowledged. It is there, as present as her heartbeat.

Then, the final stanza, she finds her voice is no longer alone. _  
_

There are thirteen voices in the room.

_So stand in the rain, stand your ground._

_Stand up when it's all crashing down._

_You stand through the pain, you won't drown._

_And one day, what's lost can be found. _

_You stand in the rain._

She looks at them and they look back at her. She turns her head, chest heaving, and Noah's dark eyes lock with hers. That feeling in her heart throbs again. Her lips stretch into a smile and she wipes away the tears, only half of her mind on the applause. Noah's setting down his guitar, and they're standing up; she prepares herself for yet another group hug.

Nothing is perfect, and there is still so much that she is not-thinking-about. But…

It is all coming down.


End file.
